Alibaba Group’s Executive Chairman, Jack Ma and PM Nawaz Sharif witnessed the signing ceremony
Pakistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Alibaba Group Holdings Limited on Tuesday to improve country’s global exports by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) through e-commerce.
The agreement between Alibaba and Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) was signed by Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir and Michael Evans, President of Alibaba Group, and Douglas Feagin, Senior Vice President of Global Business of Ant Financial, on behalf of Alibaba.
Alibaba Group’s Executive Chairman, Jack Ma and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif witnessed the signing ceremony. The MoU was signed during the visit of PM Sharif to the headquarters of the company.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister appreciated the success and performance of the Alibaba group during his visit to the headquarters of the e-commerce giant Alibaba at Hangzhou city of China’s Zhejiang province.
Speaking at the Alibaba headquarters, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said, “Pakistan possesses immense potential for investors, I am glad my meeting with Jack Ma at the World Economic Forum in January has come to fruition in the shape of the MoU we have just signed”.
“My appreciation of Ma’s dynamism and performance of the Alibaba group comes not only from its success as a e-commerce giant but more so from the focus of the group on job creation and livelihood generation,” he added.
Jack Ma, the chief executive informed the PM that Alibaba’s microfinancing business has a recovery ratio of around 99 percent. He claimed that the company delivers 60 million packages across China every day and has a record of delivering products to the toughest locations around the world, including Mount Everest.
Under the terms of the MoU, Alibaba, Ant Financial, and TDAP agreed to foster growth of worldwide exports of products by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan through e-commerce. Online and offline training programs for the SMEs would also be conducted by Alibaba in a bid to assist SMEs with on-boarding on to Alibaba’s platforms and optimizing exports through e-commerce.
In addition, Alibaba, Ant Financial and TDAP have agreed to promote the growth of financial services in Pakistan in areas such as mobile and online payment services.