China’s Alibaba to cooperate with electronic trading platform of Russia’s Gazprombank

MOSCOW, August 24. / TASS /. Chinese Internet holding company Alibaba will cooperate with an electronic trading platform of Russia’s Gazprombank, Deputy Director General electronic trading platform Gazprombank Ibrahim Paskachev told TASS on Monday. The companies signed a memorandum on cooperation to facilitate the cross-border trade for the Russian business, he said. The cooperation implies that Gazprombank electronic trading platform will send applications for bulk purchases to the list of the current suppliers, as well as to thousands of Chinese vendors from a global base of Alibaba.com. "Thanks to the fact that our procurement system will be linked to Alibaba.com, customers will be able to make payments for transactions in rubles and yuan," Paskachev said. "Through this cooperation, we will help our suppliers to find the right buyers for their products and at the same time expanding opportunities for procurement for the Russian businessmen. We are also opening a platform for suppliers that are not represented on Alibaba.com, showing our commitment to help Russian companies find the most suitable business partners,"- Wei Duan, Alibaba.com Marketing and International Business Development Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, added. In order to support cooperation between Russian and Chinese businesses the partners plan to create a common electronic communications center. The center’s task will be to standardize the translation of technical documentation and special terms that will greatly facilitate communication between buyer and supplier. "One of the most promising areas of the new cooperation is the creation of the first Russian-Chinese reference book of item numbers," Paskachev said. Its use would allow participants to improve the efficiency of procurement, in particular, the search for equivalent goods, choose an optimum logistics model and calculate customs duties automatically, he added. Currently, the system is carrying out a pilot project worth over 300 million rubles ($4.250 mln) The companies participating in the pilot project are gas giant Gazprom, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works /MMK/ as well as Evrosibenergo, TMK, Dixie, Voentorg, Kaneks and Yammi Co./ owned franchise restaurants KFC /. The total volume of purchases of these companies amounts to more than 2.5 trillion rubles ($35 bln). According to preliminary estimates, purchases by the countries of Asian-Pacific region may account for about 10-15% of this amount. Read more