Jack Ma’s meeting with Guan Eng ‘positive’

Jack Ma, billionaire and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., reacts during a panel session on the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2016 (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Thursday, June 16, 2016. The 20th anniversary St. Petersburg International Economic Forum brings together heads of state and governments, political leaders, leading experts and global company executives and runs from June 16-18. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

PETALING JAYA: Alibaba founder and chief executive officer Jack Ma is believed to have held an informal meeting with Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

The meeting had generated a certain amount of positivity against a backdrop of unfavourable contracts signed between China companies and the previous Barisan Nasional government, said sources.

Ma is one of China’s prominent businessmen, and among the first, to have met a high-ranking official from the Pakatan Harapan government.

Interestingly, the meeting over dinner yesterday came at a time when the government is leaning towards Japan for economic cooperation, according to the sources.

Under the premiership of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the newly-minted government has in five weeks, raised red flags on two projects undertaken by China’s state-owned companies, namely the East Coast Rail Line and two pipeline agreements worth RM9.4bil.

The petrochemical and gas pipeline projects were awarded to China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau by Suria Strategic Energy Resources Sdn Bhd.

The Finance Ministry has found no documents to support claims that China had committed to import goods worth US$2 trillion (RM7.96 trillion) as part of two pipeline agreements worth RM9.4bil.

Ma is in Kuala Lumpur to open an Alibaba office in Bangsar South, today (June 18).

Reuters reported that Alibaba was planning to set up a traffic control system to harness artificial intelligence for Kuala Lumpur – its first such service outside China, as the e-commerce giant pushes to grow its cloud computing business.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, said it planned to make live traffic predictions and recommendations to increase traffic efficiency in Kuala Lumpur.