Philippine finance chief to meet Alibaba's Jack Ma in China

MANILA - Officials led by Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez are to meet Jack Ma, founder and chairman of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, in Hangzhou on Thursday to explore innovations in digital commerce, the Department of Finance (DOF) said on Monday.

Ahead of Dominguez's meeting with Ma on Thursday, DOF said a Philippine delegation of finance and central bank officials are also scheduled to visit Alibaba Business School, an institution focusing on implementing Alibaba Group's e-commerce training system.

The group is expected to take part in a lecture series from Jan 31 to Feb 2 designed to gain a wider understanding of an e-commerce ecosystem including the digital technologies that can be employed to improve the Philippines' nascent online payment system.

"We will look at the financial regulations in China and explore how we can tap digital technologies to empower our micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), especially those in the countryside, the same way that Jack Ma did to help small enterprises in China gain a foothold in the global e-commerce industry," Dominguez said.

According to the Alibaba Business School, the three-day New Economy Workshop organized by Alibaba and tailor-fit to the Philippine setting "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 fintech (financial technology), logistics, e-commerce and big data industries."

The Philippine government aims to put in place a secure, seamless and efficient digital payment system in the country to make it financially inclusive, enabling Filipinos to sell and buy online and easily tap credit facilities even with limited loan histories.

With the help of China's financial and technological output into the Southeast Asian country's developing mobile Internet industry, mobile payment becomes a new trend in the urban Philippines.