SM to go into public market business

MANILA, Philippines - Shopping mall giant SM Prime Holdings Inc. is breaking into the indoor public market business with plans to develop a P500-million food market in Cavite as part of a strategy to look for fresh sources of income for the group.

SM Prime executive vice-president and chief financial officer Jeffrey Lim told reporters that the company is partnering with the local government to put up a full-scale public market on a two-hectare lot located in Dasmariñas, Cavite.

The project, to be called SM Place, is expected to create an expansive year-round shopping district with dozens of local growers, seafood merchants, fresh meat vendors, bakers and other businesses.

Slated for completion in the last quarter of 2011, the project will also include the development of a hypermarket or retail center to give the public more shopping pleasure.

Lim said the company wanted to give an opportunity for small vendors to sell their food without facing the steep price of a spot.

He said the public market could also showcase Cavite City’s local small-scale agriculture.

SM Prime is budgeting P11 billion this year for the construction of eight new malls located in Masinag, Cavite; San Fernando, Pampanga; Dasmariñas, Cavite; Commonwealth; Cebu; Sucat, Parañaque; and Apalit, Pampanga.

Lim said the new malls would provide the group with an additional 400,000 square meters of gross leasable area by the end of 2011.

In China, the group is allotting P9 billion to continue building new malls there and for acquisition of land for future expansion.

For 2012, Lim said SM Prime will be opening new malls in Lanang, Davao and General Santos City in south Cotabato. SM Prime ended 2010 with a total of 40 malls nationwide.  Including the four SM China malls, SM Prime’s total estimated GFA stood at 5.4 million sqm by the end of December last year.