Five More Malls in Mindanao by SM

SM plans to build five more malls in Mindanao, business tycoon Hans T. Sy, president of SM Prime Holdings, Inc., said on Friday.

Sy formally formally opened SM Lanang Premier in Davao City to the public, the fifth Premier SM Mall in the Philippines.

“I have aggressive plans for Mindanao, next year we will be opening an SM mall in Cagayan de Oro City (CDO) and another in Butuan City,” he said, adding that the upcoming second CDO SM Mall will be similar to that in Olongapo City and the Butuan SM Mall will be similar to that in the newly opened mall in General Santos City.

Sy further said negotiations were also ongoing for the building of three more SM Malls in Mindanao.

“We have already identified the three sites and negotiations are ongoing,” he said but declined to give further details.

There are four SM Malls in Mindanao, two in Davao City, one in General Santos City and one in Cagayan de Oro City. The number would climb to a total of nine SM Malls with five more in the pipeline in the next four years, Sy said.

Sy said based on a survey conducted by SM Prime Holdings, “Mindanao has a very strong buying power, stronger compared to Manila,” adding that the advantage of Manila was only in terms of volume of buyers.

“But per transactions average Mindanao turned out to have a stronger buying power,” he said.

The strong buying powers in Mindanao have encouraged SM Prime Holdings to go into expansions in Mindanao, thus opening up of more SM Malls, Sy said.

He said SM Prime Holdings was very confident the existing four SM Malls in Mindanao would hit from 6-8 percent share in the total revenues of SM Malls in the country.

“We are so impressed with the performance of our Mindanao malls. The island has a lot of potentials, and it’s quite a little bit late because we were so focused in the Luzon area,” he said.

He dismissed criticisms that SM Prime Holdings intends to saturate the regions in the country, including Mindanao with SM Malls thereby killing other small malls and department stores.

He however did not discount the possibility that with the fast urbanization of the city a buying out of smaller malls might likely happen in the future.

He said SM would not infuse huge capitals for additional malls for grid but rather to help improve the economies of the communities.

The SM Lanang Premier will be generating a total of 10,000 employment, including those that will be hired to work in the upcoming Park Inn Hotel when it operates in full swing.

About 7,000 were given jobs with the opening of the Premier mall on Friday, he said.

The SM City at Ecoland generated about 6,000 jobs and counting with the coming of more tenants at the newly opened Annex Building, he said.

“We opened a Premier SM Mall in Davao City to uplift the standard of the people. With about 8 million Overseas Filipino Workers, they know what they see outside,” he said adding that SM’s primary intention is also to upgrade the people by providing malls with international standards.

SM Lanang Premier is SM Prime’s 46th shopping center and SM’s fourth in Mindanao and the second in Davao.

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