KUALA LUMPUR: Alibaba Group founder and executive chairman Jack Ma pledges to help turn Malaysia into a regional digital powerhouse that will "redefine global trade".
DFTZ, first free trade zone outside China to be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and technology, is expected to increase SMEs exports to US$38 billion, create over 60,000 jobs and facilitate movement of goods worth US$65 billion by 2025.
It also has the vision to make Malaysia Asia's leading transshipment hub by 2025.
Ma said it aims to continue to support Malaysia, especially the SMEs and micro businesses, to become further globalised with its provision of technology, finance and training into DFTZ.
For example, inducing advanced technology into DFTZ, a similar concept to China's free trade zones which help facilitate multi-billion products in just 100 minutes across the republic, would enable Malaysia to have the capacity to market to at least two billion population globally in shorter time, he added.
"In the past 30 years, global trade has been designed for big companies. This is the first free trade zone that focuses on SMEs and micro businesses.
"It should be a leading model to other free trade zones in other countries. The free trade zone initiative gives a new meaning to global trade," Ma said at the launch of DFTZ First Phase.
Export markets, via DFTZ, have been identified to be Europe, Russia, China and Southeast Asian regions, he added.
Alibaba's Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP) forms part of DFTZ to ensure the free trade zone facilitates seamless cross-border trade.
eWTP offers Malaysian SMEs the infrastructure for doing commerce with services encompassing logistics, cloud computing and mobile payment.
Ma said eWTP aims to lower trade barriers and provide more equitable access to markets for SMEs.
"Malaysia is the first country to adopt eWTP initiative outside China. In the future, more of this will be done in other countries to create the global network to facilitate trade for SMEs around the world," he said.