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Alibaba Group expands hub into Malaysia
March 22, 2017, 10:07 am

Jack Ma founded Alibaba in 1999. In September 2014, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the world’s biggest IPO [Xinhua]


Jack Ma, the chairman of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, joined Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to inaugurate the opening of a trading and logistics hub for the company in the capital Kuala Lumpur.

This would mark the first such hub outside the Chinese headquarters, which was established in Hangzhou in 1999.

“The first e-hub under the eWTP outside of China will go a long way towards making global trade more inclusive and provide much needed support to a hugely important constituent: SMEs and the younger generation,” Jack said.

According to the Malaysian press, the prime minister and Jack signed a number of MoUs which will push for the construction of an e-hub near the capital’s main airport as well as the creation of an e-talent training facility for the Malaysian e-market, among other things.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Alibaba said that the hub, which falls under the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) initiative in Malaysia, would “function as a centralized customs clearance, warehousing, and fulfillment facility for Malaysia and the region”.

Last year, Bloomberg reported that Alibaba’s marketplaces have been growing faster than China’s retail sector as a whole.

“For all the angst about China’s slowing economy, its retail sector is growing at about five times the pace of the U.S. and looks set to definitively overtake the dollar value of U.S. trade this year,” said the report.

In 2014, Alibaba Group was US-listed on the New York Stock Exchange in what was a record-breaking initial public offering.

At press time, shares were trading down two per cent at $105.09.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies