LAUNCHING CEREMONY FOR PARTNERSHIP OF EXABYTES AND ALIBABA.COM

SPEECH BY CHIEF MINISTER OF PENANG

AT THE LAUNCHING CEREMONY FOR PARTNERSHIP

OF EXABYTES AND ALIBABA.COM

 

25 April 2019

The Light Hotel, Penang

 

Mr Chan Kee Siak

CEO and Founder, Exabytes Network

Mr Eric Zhang

Head of Operations, Alibaba.com Malaysia

Dato’ Seri Lee Kah Choon

Special Advisor to Chief Minister of Penang

Encik Mohamad Imran bin Mohamad Radzi

Assistant Director, MATRADE (Northern Region)

Ladies and gentlemen

Good afternoon to all distinguished guests. It gives me great pleasure to be here today to officiate the launching ceremony for the strategic channel partnership between Exabytes and Alibaba.com. 

Market access has been a barrier for SMEs to sell their products and ideas in the past decades but digitalization has revolutionized market access. I believe the collaboration between Exabytes and Alibaba.com could expose the local SMEs to tap into millions of potential customers worldwide and to discover new business opportunities. This is also in line with the state government’s initiative to encourage SME companies to adopt digitalization and Industry 4.0 in their operations.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Continued digitalization is unstoppable and the digital economy would be the new growth driver for the country. The Malaysian digital economy grew at 9% per annum in value-added terms in 2010 to 2016. This was faster than Malaysia’s overall GDP growth, suggesting the role of the digital economy as a source of expansion. Moreover, study from International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated that over 21% of Malaysia's GDP will be digitalized by 2022, versus the current level of 18%. Malaysia’s digital economy, with e-commerce being one of the key components, is at its fast-growing phase. Against this backdrop, I strongly encourage SMEs and local businesses to innovate and make the most of the benefits available out there. The development of SMEs in tandem with the technology change is crucial, given that SMEs provided two thirds of total jobs in Malaysia and contributed 37% of the total GDP in 2017.

I am hopeful that this partnership between Alibaba.com and Exabytes will further encourage local SMEs to digitize their businesses and achieve bigger goals by making their business successful beyond Malaysia.

In order to achieve one of the themes in my Penang2030 vision – “Upgrade the economy to raise household incomes” – pushing for digitalization in different aspects of the economy would be the main agenda.

The State Government understands that digitalization in the private sector, particularly for the SMEs, would not be able to progress smoothly without the readiness of affordable high-quality internet. I believe the recent launch by the federal government of the National Fiberisation and Connectivity Plan (NFCP) could spur the digital economy and accelerate the development of broadband infrastructure.

Beyond that, we must be mindful that the era of 5G is coming and we cannot afford to stay stagnant and complacent with our current achievement of 97.7% of Penang area being covered with 4G connectivity. In this regard, I am pleased that the state is targeting to obtain its 5G connectivity by 2021.

Last but not least, I would like to congratulate Exabytes for its achievement. I am proud to see Exabytes being another successful Penang-based startup story. Started his venture as just a web hosting reseller, the founder of Exabytes, who is also the current CEO, managed to grow his business into a leading web hosting and cloud services provider in Southeast Asia. The appointment of Exabytes by Alibaba.com as the latter’s Channel Partner suggests that its capability is recognized by a global leading player. This has once again proved that Penang is not lacking in talents with an entrepreneurial mindset. 

With that, I once again would like to thank Exabytes and Alibaba.com for inviting me to witness this meaningful event and I wish you both a fruitful cooperation.

Thank you.