Day: May 15, 2018

Mexico’s central bank said Tuesday that it was creating a cybersecurity unit, following a hack on a domestic payments system at the end of April that affected Mexican banks.

The central bank said in a notice in the government’s daily gazette that the new unit would design and issue guidelines on information security for the country’s banks, which are supervised by the central bank.

Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon Carrillo said Monday that the country had seen an unprecedented attack on payment system connections and that he hoped that measures being taken would stop future incidents.

The attack on Mexican banks is similar to one of the biggest-ever known cyber heists, when thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, said Fermin Gonzalez, head of forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mexico.

“Perhaps, some financial institutions perceived the attacks in Bangladesh as something very distant,” he said, adding that some Mexican banks may not have invested in sufficient security measures.

“But criminals look for vulnerability and once they see it they are going to exploit it.”

The central bank has not identified which banks were hit by the cyberattack or detailed how much thieves were able to wire out to bogus accounts in other banks.

A source close to the government’s investigation said more than 300 million had been siphoned out of banks, but it was not clear how much had subsequently been taken out in cash withdrawals.

Bank Grupo Financiero Banorte said Tuesday it does not expect the attack to hit financial results.
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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday rejected any plan by President Donald Trump to ease restrictions on China’s ZTE Corp, calling the telecommunications firm a security threat and vowing not to abandon legislation clamping down on the company.

Trump on Monday had defended his decision to revisit penalties on ZTE for flouting U.S. sanctions on trade with Iran, in part by saying it was reflective of the larger trade deal the United States is negotiating with China.

“I hope the administration does not move forward on this supposed deal I keep reading about,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. Bilateral talks between the world’s two biggest economies resume in Washington this week.

The Wall Street Journal has reported Beijing would back away from threats to slap tariffs on U.S. farm goods in exchange for easing the ban on selling components to ZTE.

“They are basically conducting an all-out assault to steal what we’ve already developed and use it as the baseline for their development so they can supplant us as the leader in the most important technologies of the 21st century,” Rubio said at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Asia policy.

Trump had taken to Twitter on Sunday with a pledge to help the company, which has suspended its main operations, because the penalties had cost too many jobs in China. It was a departure for a president who often touts “America First” policies.

The Commerce Department in April found ZTE had violated a 2017 settlement created after the company violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, and banned U.S. companies from providing exports to ZTE for seven years.

U.S. companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.

Cybersnooping?

The suggestion outraged members of Congress who have been pressing for more restrictions on ZTE. Some U.S. lawmakers have alleged equipment made by ZTE and other Chinese companies could pose a cyber security threat.

​”Who makes unilateral concessions on the eve of talks after you’ve spent all this time trying to say, correctly in my view, that the Chinese have ripped off our technology?” Senator Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, told Reuters.

Wyden, who is also on the Intelligence Committee, was one of 32 Senate Democrats who signed a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump of putting China’s interests ahead of U.S. jobs and national security.

The company has denied wrongdoing.

Republican Representative Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday he did not expect lawmakers would seek to remove a ban on ZTE technology from a must-pass annual defense policy bill making its way through Congress.

“I confess I don’t fully understand the administration’s take on this at this point,” Thornberry said. “It is not a question to me of economics, it is a question of security.”

Another Republican, Senator John Kennedy, defended Trump, saying the president’s approach is part of a larger set of negotiations with China.

“He didn’t get up one day and go, ‘I think I’ll change my mind on ZTE.’ I think it’s part of a larger issue, and part of a larger set of negotiations,” Kennedy told reporters.
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Mexico’s economy minister said that he saw diminishing chances for a new North American Free Trade Agreement ahead of a Thursday deadline to present a deal that could be signed by the current U.S. Congress.

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Republican-controlled Congress would need to be notified of a new NAFTA deal by Thursday to give lawmakers a chance of approving it before a newly elected Congress takes over in January.

“It is not easy. We do not think we will have it by Thursday,” Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told broadcaster Televisa on Tuesday.

But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a more upbeat tone, telling reporters in Calgary a few hours later, “There is very much an eminently achievable outcome … and we are very close.”

“We are going to continue to remain optimistic,” said Trudeau. He met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday and discussed the possibility of bringing NAFTA talks to a “prompt conclusion.”

Negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada have been in intense talks since last month to try to reach a deal before U.S. congressional elections in November. Mexico’s presidential vote on July 1 also complicates the process.

“We will keep negotiating, and in the moment that we have a good negotiation, we can close the deal … independent of which Congress (the current or new) that will vote on it,” said Guajardo.

Mexico’s peso sank to its weakest level in over a year on Tuesday, and the country’s benchmark stock index fell about 1 percent to its lowest since early April.

Guajardo said the talks could be concluded before or just after the July 1 vote.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is leading polls to win the presidential race, and his pick for economy minister, Graciela Marquez, said last month his administration would be willing to accept a deal struck before the election.

If that is not possible, she said it would be better to complete the negotiation after the next government takes office at the start of December. Guajardo said the next government’s team would need to be involved in any talks after July 1.

Guajardo said negotiators were getting close to reaching a deal on rules for the auto  sector under NAFTA.

However, talks still faced the hurdles of U.S. demands for a sunset clause that would allow NAFTA to expire if it is not renegotiated every five years, and the elimination of settlement panels for trade disputes.

More flexibility was needed for a deal, Guajardo said. Kenneth Smith, the chief Mexican negotiator at the talks, said that for Mexico there were no deadlines.

Irrespective of the Thursday deadline mentioned by Ryan,there was still time to ratify anew NAFTA this year, Smith told broadcaster Enfoque Noticias.

Hanging over the talks is Trump’s threat to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on its trade partners. Mexico and Canada have been spared so far, although the latest exemption for them will run out at the end of May.

Smith said his government would retaliate with equivalent measures “immediately” if tariffs or quotas were imposed.
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Venezuela’s state-run oil firm PDVSA has bought nearly $440 million worth of foreign crude and shipped it directly to Cuba on friendly credit terms — and often at a loss, according to internal company documents reviewed by Reuters.

The shipments are the first documented instances of the OPEC nation buying crude to supply regional allies instead of selling them oil from its own vast reserves.

Venezuela made the discounted deliveries, which have not been previously reported, despite its dire need for foreign currency to bolster its collapsing economy and to import food and medicine amid widespread shortages.

The open-market oil purchases to subsidize one of Venezuela’s few remaining allies underscores its increasing global isolation and the disintegration of its energy sector under socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

The purchases came as Venezuela’s crude production hit a 33-year low in the first quarter — down 28 percent in 12 months.

Its refineries are operating at a third of capacity, and its workers are resigning by the thousands.

PDVSA bought the crude for up to $12 per barrel more than it priced the same oil when it shipped to Cuba, according to prices on internal documents reviewed by Reuters. But Cuba may never pay cash for the cargoes because Venezuela has long accepted goods and services from Cuba in return for oil under a pact signed in 2000 by late presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

PDVSA, the Venezuela government and the Cuba government did not respond to requests for comment.

Venezuela’s government has previously said it only imports oil to blend with its own tar-like crude to improve quality and create an exportable product, or to feed its refinery in Curacao. But hundreds of PDSVA documents examined by Reuters detailing imports and exports, dated from January 2017 to May of this year, show the company is now buying crude at market prices to deliver to allies — in shipments that never pass through Venezuela.

Sanctions

The subsidized deliveries are aimed at maintaining political support from Cuba, one of a dwindling group of Venezuela allies, according to diplomats, politicians and PDVSA executives.

“Maduro is giving away everything he can because these countries’ backing, especially from Cuba, is all the political support he has left,” said a former top Venezuelan government official who declined to be identified.

Late Tuesday, a leader of the political opposition to Maduro, Henrique Capriles, reacted to Reuters’ disclosure of the oil shipments to Cuba by tweeting: “Venezuelans are suffering the worst crisis without food or medicine, our oil is about to be seized due to PDVSA’s debts, and they continue irresponsibly

Caracas has come under increasing international pressure as the United States, the European Union and Canada have sanctioned Venezuela for what they see as Maduro’s attempts to cement a dictatorship.

As Venezuela spends on oil imports, it has imported less of everything else its citizens desperately need. Venezuela’s spending on non-oil imports plunged from nearly $46 billion in 2011 to $6 billion in 2017, according to Venezuela Central Bank data and Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based economic research organization.

The oil PDVSA procured for Cuba was Russian Urals crude, the documents show, a variety well-suited for Cuban refineries constructed from Soviet-era equipment.

PDVSA bought the crude from Chinese, Russian and Swiss firms — not for cash, but a pledge that PDVSA would deliver other oil shipments later, the documents show.

That adds to Venezuela’s already towering debts of oil to state-owned firms in Russia and China, which together have extended Venezuela’s government more than $60 billion in oil-for-loan deals that have propped up its budget amid declining exports and lower oil prices.

“It’s nonsense to import oil to keep subsidized exports flowing,” said Ecoanalitica President Asdrubal Oliveros.

Petro-diplomacy

Venezuela’s socialist government has long used oil for domestic and international political ends, subsidizing goods and services at home and currying favor across the region with oil deliveries on generous terms.

Venezuela’s oil supply arrangements have helped soften international political censure of Maduro’s government.

The Organization of American States (OAS), which includes most Western Hemisphere nations, last year took up a motion seeking to pressure Venezuela to hold free elections, liberate political prisoners and declare a humanitarian crisis.

The effort was defeated when 12 countries that have received regular oil shipments from Venezuela in recent years — about a third of the OAS membership — opposed it or refused to vote.

Eventually, the OAS passed a watered-down motion urging free and fair elections.

Venezuela has avoided formal OAS condemnation “thanks to the support of the bloc of Caribbean nations that have benefited from its subsidized oil and development programs for years,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said on April 30 during a talk at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Most of those countries are members of Venezuela’s Petrocaribe trade pact, launched in 2005, which has granted up to 16 Caribbean and Central American states with oil supplies on favorable terms.

OAS President Luis Almagro declined to comment through press office representative Monica Reyes.

El Salvador’s Economy Minister, Luz Estrella Rodriguez, said Petrocaribe and other pacts promoted by Venezuela had played an important role in her country’s development.

“Our country is very grateful,” she said. “The government of El Salvador, of course, is a friend and an ally of the Venezuelan government.”

El Salvador refused to vote last year on the OAS motion to condemn Venezuela.

Venezuela also supplied fuel last year to Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Dominica, the documents show.

In total, members of oil trade pacts with Venezuela last year received at least 103,000 bpd of crude and refined products from PDVSA, the documents show, or about 6 percent of Venezuela’s exports.

Falling output, shrinking imports

The falling output of Venezuela’s refineries has also left the country increasingly dependent on fuel imports to meet domestic consumption.

The internal PDVSA data reviewed by Reuters shows Venezuela last year purchased some 180,000 barrels per day of foreign crude and refined products from PetroChina, Rosneft, Lukoil, Reliance Industries and other suppliers, 17 percent more than in 2016.

Those companies did not respond to requests for comment.

The purchases totaled more than $4 billion, according to PDVSA records.

Last year, total oil-industry purchases, including equipment and services, consumed 45 percent of Venezuela’s total import spending, up from 13 percent in 2011, Ecoanalitica data shows.

Energy imports totaled $5.4 billion out of $11.9 billion.

The resulting scarcity of food, medicine and employment has caused thousands of citizens to flee Venezuela. The pay of PDVSA workers now can’t cover the barest essentials because of the collapse of its currency, the bolivar.

“A worker’s salary is not even enough for a box of eggs,” said Hector Bertis, a PDVSA worker and union leader. “We go to the bank, and they give us 10,000 bolivars — less than what a transportation fare costs.”
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The head of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday said the North Korean leadership is hopeful that following a possible denuclearization deal, the international community will increase humanitarian aid for millions of people in the country who are living in poverty and suffering from malnutrition.

“There is a tremendous sense of optimism by the leadership, by the people I met with, in the hopes that they will be turning a new chapter in their history, a new page,” said David Beasley, the Executive Director of the WFP during a briefing in Seoul.

The WFP director visited North Korea for four days last week, spending two days in Pyongyang and two visiting rural areas outside the capital. Beasley said he was given “remarkable” access during his visit to the restrictive state where contact with foreigners is tightly controlled. Government minders also accompanied him during his visit.

Beasley, a former governor of the U.S. state of South Carolina, was nominated to head the WFP last year by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who is also a former South Carolina governor.

With the upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now scheduled to be held in Singapore on June 12, there are increased expectations that an agreement will be reached to dismantle the North’s nuclear, missile and chemical weapons programs that threaten the U.S. and its allies.

Details over the scope and timing of the denuclearization process must still be worked out, but the North Korean leader has indicated he wants to resolve the dispute to focus on improving the economic conditions of the country.

Widespread malnutrition

Ending the severe U.S. led sanctions banning 90% of North Korean trade that were imposed for the North’s repeated nuclear and missile tests, would open the door to increased economic investment and cooperation.

Humanitarian assistance has been exempted from the economic sanctions, but Beasely said import restrictions has made it more complicated to bring in aid, and made potential donors reluctant to contribute for fear of inadvertently violating sanctions.

Beasley’s North Korean itinerary included trips to WFP funded projects, including a children’s nursery in South Hwanghae province, located near the inter-Korean border, and a cookie factory in North Pyongan province, near the border with China. In the last year the WFP has made over 1,800 site visits to assure that aid provided went to those who need it most.

The WFP director said poverty and food shortages were prevalent, particularly in rural areas.

“Going from village to village while we did not see starvation, there were clearly issues of under-nutrition or malnutrition,” he said.

WFP provides food aid to an estimated 650,000 women and children in North Korea every month, although funding shortfalls, the organization says, have caused rations to be reduced or suspended in some cases.

The WFP is hoping to greatly increase food aid to North Korea after a nuclear deal is reached and sanctions are revoked. But Beasely said the leadership in Pyongyang must provide even greater access and transparency to clearly demonstrate the need for assistance, and to assure donors that their contributions will go to those who need it most.

“I said very clearly that we want to work with you, we want to help you, but you must help us,” said Beasely.

Agriculture reforms

The U.S. provided North Korea significant food aid in the 1990s to ease severe famine conditions that caused widespread starvation and deaths that were due in part to the loss of Soviet support and a failed communist agriculture model that caused food production to decline.

However Washington ended the bilateral aid program later due in part to concerns that assistance was being redirected to support the North Korea’s military, and to free up more resources for the country’s nuclear development program.

North Korea currently produces five million metric tons of food a year, but the WFP estimates it needs between six and seven million metric tons annually to feed its population of 25 million. Around 10 million North Koreans suffer from malnutrition or under-nutrition, according to the WFP director.

Farmers in North Korea also face significant hardship in producing enough food for the population, with only 15 to 20 percent of land suitable for agriculture in the mostly mountainous terrain, and often lacking fertilizers and modern tractors to cultivate the fields.

In recent years North Korean leader Kim Jong Un instituted agricultural reforms allowing farmers to keep or sell a portion of what they produce. These financial incentives have been credited with helping to stabilize food production despite floods and droughts that regularly occur.

Lee Yoon-jee contributed to this report.

 
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Even before US and Chinese officials sit down this week for a second round of high-level trade talks in Washington, both sides have been signaling a willingness to try and make a deal or at least meet the other halfway.

Whether or not that will be enough to get them across the finish line remains to be seen, analysts say.

Late last week at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai signaled China’s willingness to address a range of issues from the deficit to the protection of intellectual property rights.

Deficit detente

Cui said that while it is overly simplistic to say trade deficit means loss and surplus means gain, there is a clear need for better macroeconomic coordination between the two countries.

“A huge deficit for you and a huge surplus for us – I don’t think this should continue,” he said. “I don’t think it will continue. For us, such an imbalance is already a problem rather than a benefit.”

When Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and China’s Vice Premier Liu He led trade delegations earlier this month in Beijing, the deficit loomed large. A leaked list of some of Washington’s demands included a request that China help cut the trade deficit between the two countries by $100 billion a year over the next two years.

Many have scoffed at the figure and the possibility that Beijing could bridge such a seemingly huge gap, but Cui’s remarks are telling.

Gene Ma, head of China research at the Institute of International Finance, said that even though negotiations may be hard, messy and ugly, that is better than not negotiating.

And while there is room for hope, any agreement is unlikely without some compromise, he said.

“A lot of the tough measures put out can eventually be watered down, the tariffs can be postponed, some sectors can be wavered, China can buy more products from the U.S.,” he said. “There is something that both sides can do, but of course there are other sectors that are harder such as technologies.”

China has long been criticized for its trade policies, for forcing foreign companies to hand over technology in return for access to its markets and its rampant problem of intellectual property theft.

In a bid to change that, the Trump administration launched an investigation into Beijing’s policies and trade practices related to technology transfer, innovation and intellectual property.

The president has threatened to levy up to $150 billion in tariffs against China and the deadline for that action is fast approaching.

A public hearing will be held on Tuesday in Washington to discuss the tariffs, and if he chooses, President Trump could place a levy on Chinese goods as early as next week.

If he does, China has pledged to respond in kind, threatening to raise tariffs on some $50 billion in American goods, including soybeans.

IC Bargaining Chip

As for Beijing’s demands, one big concern is Washington’s recent decision to place a seven-year ban on the sale of American components to Chinese mobile phone maker ZTE.

In the first round of talks, Beijing demanded that the United States amend the ruling. And then late last week, just days before talks were set to resume in Washington, the company claimed that its main business operations had ceased due to the ban imposed by the U.S. government.

The move has highlighted the incredible leverage Washington has when it comes to technology, but also limits as well.

Over the weekend, however, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he was working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to throw a lifeline to the company. Trump’s about-face has sparked outrage from some and concern from others. Some argue that if Trump does anything to reverse the ruling, he would be interfering with law enforcement.

Others said the move will conveniently buy the administration more time to strike a deal.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the two sides are narrowing in on a deal that could see Washington use the ZTE ban in exchange for a reprieve of Chinese tariffs on billions of dollars of American agricultural products.

But there are other obvious reasons for Trump’s shift. The most glaring of them is that while the ban would hurt ZTE and highlights how China lags far behind in the computer chip industry, it is also an issue of American jobs.

“Unlike soybeans, finding customers for such a large amount of semiconductor chips in such a short period of time is not easy and that would not only impact on American jobs but go against Trump’s campaign promises,” said Eric Zhou, a Beijing-based commentator. “And because of that it’s more pragmatic [for Washington] to use the ban as a policy measure and trade war bargaining chip.”

Brian Kopczynski contributed to this report.
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In a warehouse on the outskirts of Indonesia’s capital, supervisors at e-commerce company Lazada use bikes or electric scooters to zip around a floor the size of four soccer fields, where up to 3,000 staff pack and dispatch goods around the clock.

The warehouse is one of five that Lazada has opened across Indonesia to cut costs and expand its reach in an archipelago whose 17,000 islands are sprinkled across an area bigger than the European Union.

Chinese tech firms, including Lazada’s top investor, Alibaba Group Holding, have poured at least $6 billion into nearly every aspect of Indonesian e-commerce.

Lazada uses Alibaba’s inventory management systems and has tied up with ride-hailing companies, often using their motorbikes to deliver goods in a country with creaking infrastructure and traffic-clogged cities.

The payoff could be huge. It is a market forecast to grow from about $7 billion last year to $63 billion by 2027, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Indonesia, both in terms of the customers and behavior, is a very unique challenge and we need to adapt,” Florian Holm, co-chief executive at Lazada Indonesia, told Reuters.

Lazada and Tokopedia, in which Alibaba is also an investor, dominate Indonesia in customer traffic, with more than 117 million monthly website visits each, according to data from e-commerce aggregator iPrice.

Alibaba doubled its investment in loss-making Lazada to $4 billion in April, underscoring its global ambition to secure a bigger share of the e-commerce market.

Between the investment and the rewards, however, lie enormous complexities.

The World Bank has said logistical costs swallow up around a quarter of Indonesia’s gross domestic product, citing bottlenecks in supply chains, long dwelling times in ports and lengthy trade clearances.

Lazada has opened warehouses in places like Balikpapan, on the coast of Borneo, to avoid hauling everything from Jakarta.

Holm said that had in some cases reduced shipping costs by 90 percent.

Competitive pressure is growing. Another Chinese heavyweight, JD.com, arrived in Indonesia in 2016. And the U.S. giant Amazon, which opened a warehouse in Singapore last year, may be prepared to dip a toe into the Indonesian market soon.

Chinese influence

Indonesia’s e-commerce sales are set to rise from 3 percent of retail activity now to 19 percent by 2027, Morgan Stanley estimates. The same report said there were 159 million smartphones in Indonesia at the end of 2016, a number that could rise to 275 million by 2021.

Indonesia’s young population and room for improvement in transportation and communications add to the prospects for growth, the bank said.

That has attracted other Chinese companies. Tencent Holdings, which owns regional e-commerce player SEA, has entered the fray.

Tencent and JD.com have stakes in Indonesia’s ride-hailing firm Go-Jek, while JD.com has invested in online travel company Traveloka.

But Usman Akhtar, a partner at Bain & Co. in Jakarta, said Indonesian companies such as Blibli, backed by a unit of the Djarum group, remain a force.

“I would not characterize Indonesia as turning into a replica of China’s e-commerce market, at least not yet,” said Akhtar, referring to how JD.com and Alibaba dominate in China.

Kusumo Martanto, who heads Blibli, told Reuters the company had seven warehouses in Indonesia with seven more planned, and said it was important for local e-commerce companies to compete against Chinese players.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma is on an Indonesian government steering committee for e-commerce, advising on areas such as tax, cyber security and human resources.

Indonesia’s communications minister, Rudiantara, said there was no conflict of interest in Ma’s role, describing him as a “guru” who could help sell the country’s potential.

But some policies seem to be turning toward Ma’s home turf.

Indonesia, which is trying to tackle a shortage of talent in the digital sector, dropped sponsorships for 20 students to study in places like Australia and the United States.

Instead, 10 students will go to India and 10 to China to study this year “because the future of the digital economy is in China and India,” said the minister, who uses one name.

Eying Amazon

Caterine, a 30-year-old housewife who lives west of Jakarta, used to shop in conventional stores once a week, but after her baby was born six months ago, she has been shopping online two to three times a week for convenience.

“I prefer online shopping because it is quick. I can just click and click and the goods will arrive,” she said, adding she mostly used Shopee and Tokopedia for goods such as diapers and clothing.

Morgan Stanley said delivery times of all types across Indonesia are down to about 3 days from 10 days, while deliveries in big cities can take 24 hours or less.

While in urban areas delivery times have greatly improved, other parts of Indonesia’s e-commerce supply chain are still inefficient, said Willson Cuaca, co-founder of East Ventures, a tech investment fund.

“To send goods from point A to B, the logistics company needs at least two modes of transport,” he said, referring to the complications of operating across so many islands.

Amazon, by contrast, prefers to control its own supply chains from start to finish. But entering a market like Indonesia could require it to revisit that strategy.

Amazon Singapore did not respond to a request for comment on whether it had plans for Indonesia.

Much of the U.S. giant’s international focus has been on developing its business in India, even though some view its entry into Singapore last year as a stepping stone for expansion in the region.

“At this moment, I believe it is trying to test the market, by selling products through third-party sellers,” said Daniel Tumiwa of the Indonesian e-commerce Association.

Zhang Li, who heads JD.com’s Indonesian joint venture with Provident Capital JD.ID, was not overly concerned about competition from the likes of Amazon.

“E-commerce is a global and borderless business, so we have to prepare and do continuous improvement to make our customers happy,” Zhang said.

 
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