Alibaba, affiliate Ant Financial and the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan have agreed to “foster growth” of exports from the South Asian country’s small and medium-sized enterprises. They will provide training to Pakistan’s small businesses to better use Alibaba’s platforms and e-commerce in general. The parties will also work together to grow online payments and cloud-computing services in Pakistan.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was in China this Tuesday Tuesday to witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding Alibaba. The parties will also work together to grow online payments and cloud-computing services in Pakistan.
In Pakistan, mobile phones accounted for 70% of all web traffic in the last year. However, with just 18%of the population currently online (35.1 million out of a total 194.8 million) there is still room for the sector to expand.
“With the support of the Alibaba Group we hope to elevate our local businesses to new heights and bring them into the realm of the e-commerce platform.”
– Prime Minister Sharif
It’s always worth remembering that whilst Amazon is massive in the Western world, they are dwarfed in size by the sales on Alibaba in the East. As ChannelAdvisor‘s David Spitz pointed out at this week’s Catalyst conference, if you want to see how ecommerce will develop in the West, look at what Alibaba is doing as that’s the shape of the future.
