KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is one of the better facilitators of electronic commerce (e-commerce), compared with some of its regional neighbours within the Pan Asian e-Commerce Alliance (PAA), according to chairman Francis Norman O Lopez.
“Malaysia is more advanced in terms of the utilisation of IT (information technology), and Dagang Net [Technologies Sdn Bhd], as the sole e-commerce services provider [for the trade sector], has a lot of experience,” he told The Edge Finacial Daily in an interview.
“Other countries are still not really ready. [At] government trade agencies, such as the customs, regulatory permits, licences and buyer certificates require some form of automation, and they are not quite there yet,” he added.
Dagang Net is a 71.25%-owned subsidiary of Dagang Nexchange Bhd (DNeX), which currently has a monopoly on the provision of e-commerce services and customs duty payments in Malaysia. Dagang Net is also the facilitator of e-commerce services for Malaysia within the PAA.
Lopez said the PAA is keen to add more Asean countries to its alliance.
“The e-commerce industry is continuing to grow. Based on research by Frost & Sullivan, the value of e-commerce transactions is estimated to reach US$6.7 trillion (RM24.12 trillion) by 2020,” he added.
The PAA currently comprises 11 member organisations, namely: Thailand’s CAT Telecom Public Co Ltd, China’s China International Electronic Commerce Centre, Singapore’s CrimsonLogic eTrade Services Pte Ltd, Malaysia’s Dagang Net, the Philippines’ Titanium Intercommerce Tech Inc, South Korea’s Korea Trade Network, Japan’s Nippon Automated Cargo and Port Consolidated System Inc, Macau’s Transferencia Electronica de Dados, Hong Kong’s Tradelink Electronic Commerce Ltd, Taiwan’s Trade-Van Information Services Co and Indonesia’s PT Electronic Data Interchange Indonesia.
The 11 member organisations collectively have a combined customer base of 34,000 companies or organisations. About 80% of these companies are small and medium enterprises.
The PAA alliance aims to promote and provide secure, trusted, reliable and value-added IT infrastructure and facilities to enhance seamless trade globally.
On April 16, it launched the Pan Asia Exchange (PAE), a business-to-business (B2B) platform that can verify Asian suppliers through their official trade transactions, giving global buyers a sense of confidence in the reliability of their partners.
DNeX executive director Datuk Patrick Wong described the PAE as the “Alibaba of B2B”, saying that through the platform, buyers have access to numerous purchase options, while sellers have an expanded customer reach.
“Among the 11 alliance member countries, they collectively handle US$5.5 trillion in trade volume as a whole. Of that, 80%, or about US$4.4 billion, is processed by the 11 services providers that make up the alliance,” said Wong.
“The services providers already have an existing customer base of over 340,000 users, and we aim to have at least 10,000 of these users signed up for the PAE within six months,” he added.
This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 25, 2015.