Alibaba Founder Calls For A Global E-commerce Platform
Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, called for an Electronic World Trade Platform to value the small and medium enterprises when it comes to global trading.
Alibaba Group Holding owns and operates multiple marketplaces that does not only offers luxurious brands products but also offers a chance to small and medium business owners to list their products on the platform. The reason behind this excellent and unique idea is the owner and founder of the firm Jack Ma who wants to bring the foreign products and items to Chinese people and vice versa. And in the advanced digital world, Jack Ma, seeks to come up with another but ‘fresh’ global e-commerce platform that would assist the interest of small traders.
At this point in China, the small merchants and traders have been enabled by the e-commerce to buy, sell and trade across border and Jack Ma wants a platform that would accommodate all of it. Mr. Ma was giving a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan where he laid the foundation of an Electronic World Trade Platform also known as e-WTP. This platform would allow the small and medium enterprises to enter the e-commerce market which were previously left out of the free trade area of the world.
Ma stated, “In the Internet Age, we need trade platforms that are more open, fairer and freer. We need to go back to trade itself. It is not an organization. It is not a negotiation. It is just a platform to enable the small and medium enterprises and the consumers of the world, especially the young.”
As of now, Jack Ma has not disclosed or revealed details of the platform i.e. the rules, mechanism, and how it will work considering customs and tax procedures are the two main obstacles in the way if it is going to be a cross border e-commerce platform. Alibaba Group founder said that with the new e-WTP platform, the world can predict that there will be better connection of small and medium enterprises through logistics and financing. The platform will be offered to enterprises that are not currently participating in the trade.
He said at the conference that the free trade regime which is represented by the World Trade Organization (WTO) only benefits and favors multinational companies and large corporations and there is no space for the small and medium enterprises who are eventually being left behind along with the younger generation of the country.
Jack Ma added, “Trade blocs are often used to advance protectionism rather than as enablers. Trade is the best way for people across the world to communicate with each other. No matter if you like it or not, an age of new trade has come.”