Executive is to formalise the donation of 30 ventilators from the Jack Ma Foundation

The acceptance of the donation of the 30 ventilators to treat Covid-19 patients to Porto City Hall by the Jack Ma Foundation is one of the items in the working agenda for the Municipal Executive meeting on 27th April. 

Both public hospitals in Porto have 15 ventilators each, offered by the Chinese mogul and rated by Forbes as one of the most important business men in the world.

This is an administrative procedure to accepting those ventilators that arrived in Porto on 13th April, thanks to the Portuguese Embassy in Beijing, which has been a most valuable linking point to the aide to Portugal.

These days, immediate action are of the utmost importance; as such, the Executive Municipal is articulating decisions by the Mayor of Porto that will later be ratified by the councillors.

Jack Ma aka Ma Yun, 55 years old, is a Chinese mogul, pinpointed by Forbes as one of the most important entrepreneurs in the Chinese market. He founded the Alibaba platform and was the president of that e-commerce platform.

He is regarded as a global ambassador for Chinese businesses and he is also listed as one of the most powerful business people in the world.

In 2017, he took second place at the World's 50 Greatest Leaders Rank by Fortune.

The relationship between the city of Porto and China is varied and profound, especially via the twinning of Shanghai, Shenzhen and Macau and Porto, with which the Mayor of Porto has established several protocols.

During his two mandates, Mayor Rui Moreira visited those cities several times and has established high-level contacts. The representatives of those cities also visited Porto.

The way Porto positions itself at global level, which is the result of the economic diplomacy it carries out, as well as the work by the Ambassador of Portugal in Beijing, José Augusto Duarte, lead to the donation of these crucial medical equipment to the city and to the city hospitals.