DoF officials to study Alibaba proposals for e-commerce, AI

FINANCE department officials will attend a workshop in Hangzhou, China on Wednesday, which will include a meeting with Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma to explore e-commerce and artificial intelligence (AI) applications for the Philippines.

In a statement, the Department of Finance (DoF) said that a delegation led by Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, will be in Hangzhou between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2 to hear Alibaba proposals that are “tailored” for Philippine needs. The meeting with Mr. Ma will take place on Feb. 1. “We will look at the financial regulations in China and explore how we can tap digital technologies to empower our MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises), especially those in the countryside, the same way that Jack Ma did to help small enterprises in China gain a foothold in the global ecommerce industry,” Mr. Dominguez said.

The New Economy Workshop in Hangzhou will “incorporate firsthand experience with real-life e-commerce applications in an effort to provide a framework for creating a regulatory environment that encourages growth across the financial technology, logistics, e-commerce and big data industries,” the DoF said.

The topics include inclusive finance through digital technologies; rural e-commerce development; and smart logistics in the digital economy.

There will also be discussions on the use of artificial intelligence for smart traffic management — a tool to help ease congestion in Metro Manila — led by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Alibaba Group.

Alibaba Business School is located next to the Alibaba head office in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province in eastern China. It was jointly established by Hangzhou Normal University and Alibaba Group in October 2008, focused on enabling the growth of small and medium enterprises. —