Chinese Alibaba billionaire meets Thai PM

HANGZHOU, CHINA, September 6 (TNA) - Jack Yun Ma, the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a world most established e-commerce firm, has met Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-ocha to discuss his company's systems to promote Thai products of small and medium-sized business operators globally. While meeting with the Alibaba Group's founder in Hangzhou of China's southeastern Zhejiang Province on September 5 on the sidelines of the 11th Group of 20 (G20) Summit, the Thai prime minister acknowledged that 90 per cent of Thai exports are produced by SMEs whose management needs to be further developed to enhance their business efficiency. The Thai premier said Bangkok, thus, welcomes a learning exchange and experiences shared by the Alibaba Group through the creation of business networks and linkages for supply chains of Thai SMEs. The Thai prime minister pointed out if such the supply chains were established, they would greatly benefit not only Thai SMEs, but also the Alibaba Group as the developer of the modern supply systems. The Alibaba Group's top executive predicted that over the next 30 years, there would be a new pattern of production and financial systems in the world operated and based on data and information technology (IT), which could survive SMEs and reduce their disparity gap with large-scaled businesses in the globalization era. The Alibaba Group's founder noted that Thailand has strong points in services and quality human resource and his company is pleased to use its technologies to support the logistics and payment systems for operators of Thai SMEs in exporting their goods, namely durians, other fruits and rice to China and other countries in Southeast Asia. (TNA)