HANGZHOU, China—Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the Philippines has a lot of catching up to do in the digital race, starting with modernizing its physical infrastructure, which the Duterte administration is doing now with unmatched public investments in this sector.

Dominguez said the Philippine government also has to encourage people and industries to embrace the digital economy to prepare the country for the future that is now being shaped by technology companies like Alibaba.

“The Philippines has to catch up first like China. You invested a lot in infrastructure. After the catch up, we go beyond certain steps… but first we have to raise money and convince people, encourage new industries,” Dominguez said during the first day of the New Economy Workshop organized by the Alibaba Business School for visiting Philippine officials and representatives of the business sector.

Dominguez said “our experience here in China is very important to look at what the future would be. It is helpful for us to be consulting with Jack Ma and his group because they are visionary and they have actual field experience in bringing the future to reality using the power of cloud computing, the internet, and computers to analyze big data.”

Brian Wong, the Alibaba Group’s vice president and head of the company’s Globalization Initiatives, said that like what China did, the Philippines can capitalize on the digital era by cultivating entrepreneurship in e-commerce and coming out with regulations supportive of digital trade and electronic payment systems.

It is expected that the Philippines can catch up in the digital race and take advantage of the benefits of e-commerce (electronic commerce) to empower its businesses by developing its mass market of 100 million-plus Filipino consumers.

For example, the electronic payments in China were non-existent in 1999 but has now expanded to 11 times the size of all similar transactions value in the United States. In 2016, China recorded 790 billion USD electronic transactions against the United States’ 79 billion, data from a research report showed.

“That is the type of change that can happen in the country. In the Philippines with a hundred and plus million population, it has a massive market that can be developed. Like the Secretary said, you can catch up and leapfrog,” said Wong during his lecture at the New Economy Workshop.

Upon the invitation of Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, Dominguez, along with Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Maria Almasara Cyd Tuaño Amador, Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) president Vivencio Dizon and other government officials and representatives from the Philippines’ business sector attended the Alibaba Business School’s three-day New Economy Workshop 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 in pursuit of inclusive growth.

According to Dominguez, the lectures prepared by Alibaba revolved “around the points discussed during my meeting with Jack Ma last November in Manila. This goes to show that the Duterte administration not only does meetings, but turns such meetings into opportunities for the country.”

The first day of the New Economy Workshop focused on lectures on e-commerce development in China, financial inclusion through digital finance, smart or data-based logistics and a case study on using an e-payment system with India as the model.

The New Economy Workshop for Philippine officials is the first overseas government training program organized by the Alibaba Business School. The program will be expanded to more countries in Southeast Asia, underlining Alibaba’s commitment to promoting the new economy paradigm and the role of ecommerce for creating a more inclusive trade and development system.

Xiaobo Wu, an economist and former dean of the Zheijiang University School of Management, delivered a lecture on China’s e-commerce development and its favorable state policies that led to the rapid growth of digital trade in the country, while Dr. Long Chen, Ant Financial’s Chief Strategy Officer, talked about how digital finance can help eliminate poverty.

Xiaodong Guan, the head of Cainiao Network International, discussed how a smart logistics network can keep up with the growing demand in e-commerce that traditional models cannot meet. Bhushan Patil, the president of PayTM, India’s No.1 e-wallet service provider, described how a cashless payment system can be used for one’s daily activities and doing investments online.

Chen cited the case of Kenya, where mobile payment solutions can be used for money transfers, cash withdrawals, purchases and bills payments, among other services. Today, 68 percent of adult consumers in Kenya used M-Pesa, a mobile phone-based financing service, Chen said.

He also discussed Ant Financial’s groundbreaking Green Digital Finance Alliance, which was set up in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme with the goal of reducing the world’s carbon footprint through the use of digital technology.

Ant Financial’s Ant Forest initiative is a case in point. Participants of the initiative are encouraged to conduct low-carbon behaviors in their daily life, such as walking instead of driving to work, from which users earn “green energy credits” on their mobile phone to finally plant a real tree in the desert.

“As of the end of 2017, more than 280 million users have joined Ant Forest initiative and planted 13.14 million trees in Gansu Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and other areas in China, reducing carbon emission by 2.05 million tons,” Chen said.

Before beginning the workshop, Alibaba officials toured Dominguez and the rest of the Philippine delegation to the Alibaba Museum to familiarize themselves with the company’s history and vision, which is to build the future infrastructure of commerce; and corporate culture, which abides by the basic tenet of “customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.”

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