Hong Kong-headquartered international freight service and logistics group, the U-Freight Group (UFL), has welcomed the call for the establishment of an electronic world trade platform (eWTP) whose objective would be to reduce barriers to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to expand their trading capabilities worldwide.

The call was made recently by Jack Ma, executive chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, who believes that such a platform is going to be very fundamental for the next 20 or 30 years for the world economy, and for this century.

U-Freight agrees that e-commerce can significantly reduce costs for SMEs and also ease access to customers. It believes that such an eWTP will provide SMEs with a transparent and open platform to sell their goods and services globally, thus facilitating their inclusion in cross-border e-trade.

In Ma’s vision, businesses would create hubs for e-commerce and governments would create virtual free trade zones for small businesses. The eHubs would allow small businesses in one country to sell to consumers in another, with low or no import duties, speedy customs clearances and better access to logistics. When connected, this would create a global network that becomes the eWTP.

U-Freight Group ceo, Simon Wong says that his company has been showing its commitment to developing e-commerce logistics and in respect of cross-border e-commerce in China, U-Freight has already been qualified by China Customs and CIQ as a licensed Cross-border E-Commerce Enterprise, as well as a Cross-border E-Commerce Logistics Service Provider.

“We are now concentrating on leveraging the experience that we have already gained in Chinese cross-border trade to make sure that our other strategic hubs in Asia, Europe and North America are equipped to handle the boom in business that will be associated with ever-growing global e-commerce,” Wong said.

What Alibaba’s Ma is proposing is a platform that can lower the threshold and enable more people around the world to conduct trade by reducing barriers and making it easier for SMEs to expand their trading capabilities.

“U-Freight believes that such an eWTP would provide SMEs a transparent and open platform to sell their goods and services globally, thus facilitating their inclusion in cross-border e-commerce and leading to a massive growth in cross-border shipments.

“That’s why we are making significant investments to make sure that we are ready to deliver the logistics services that will be required,” Wong added.