Pakistan, Alibaba sign MoU to promote exports

KARACHI: Pakistan on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alibaba Group Holdings Limited to promote country's worldwide exports by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through e-commerce.

The agreement between Alibaba and the 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, during the visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to the headquarters of the company.

Alibaba Group's executive chairman, Jack Ma and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif witnessed the signing ceremony. Under the terms, Alibaba, Ant Financial and TDAP agreed to foster growth of worldwide exports of products by SMEs in Pakistan through e-commerce.

Online and offline training programmes for the SMEs would also be conducted by Alibaba in a bid to assist them with on-boarding on to Alibaba's platforms and optimising exports through e-commerce.

The TDAP will help identify suitable SMEs to participate in the training programmes, while Alibaba will be responsible for providing industry analysis to the TDAP to assist them in their selection process.

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. The parties have also agreed to adopt cloud computing services to support the online and mobile e-commerce businesses of the SMEs in Pakistan.