SM Prime to build new mall in China

Sy-led property giant SM Prime Holdings Inc. is resuming its expansion plans in China with the construction of a new mall in the city of Yangzhou.

"We will start to construct within the year, that's SM Yangzhou," SM Prime president Jeffrey Lim said in a press briefing after the company's annual stockholders meeting in Pasay City on Tuesday.

SM Prime halted its mall expansion efforts in China for two years as the company put more focus on its Philippine operations "given the opportunities here," according to Lim.

Lim said the company is investing around P4 billion to build the 80,000-square meter SM Yangzhou.

"Before the end of the year 'yung construction... We will be building that over a period of two years," he said.

"The land has been with us close to three years now but we were focused on doing a lot of things in the Philippines," he added.

Aside from building a new mall, SM Prime will also expand its 300,000-square meter mall in Xiamen City.

"The expansion will be an additional 60,000 square meters," Lim said, adding that the construction will start in the latter part of this year or early next year.

"The investment for Xiamen will be about P3 billion to P4 billion but it will be spread over two years," he said.

SM Prime currently has seven malls in China located in the cities of Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu, Suzhou, Chongqing, Zibo, and Tianjin covering a total of 1.3 million square meters of gross floor area as of end-2018.

The company has 72 malls in the Philippines offering 8.3 million square meters of gross floor area.

Apart from China, SM Prime is also looking into establishing a presence in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, according to its chairman Henry Sy, Jr.

Sy, however, said there are no definite plans yet on the table but the company only expressed its intent to expand in Southeast Asia. — BM, GMA News