Alibaba's CEO Jack Ma has opened Malaysia's first Digital Free Trade Zone alongside the Malaysian Prime Minster. The Digital Free Trade Zone aims to make cross-border trade between Malaysia and other countries easier, and is expected to especially benefit smaller-to-medium sized businesses. Items stored in Free Trade Zones are not subjected to the tariffs that normally apply to companies selling products to consumers cross-border. The South East Asian ecommerce market is growing strongly and the zone is expected to be able to handle 65 billion US dollars' worth of goods once it is fully functioning. It is expected to benefit Alibaba in two ways. Firstly, it will help Alibaba-owned Lazada to sell products cross-border within the South East Asian region. It will also encourage Malaysian online shoppers to buy from Alibaba's main Chinese ecommerce site. In other news, Alibaba has just announced that its revenues for Q3 2017 skyrocketed by 61% on the same period last year, to 55.1 billion yuan.
