The world’s third-biggest shopping mall has opened in the Philippine capital, a vote of confidence in the country’s economic prospects amid a global slowdown, according to its owners.

The launch of the 90,000 square metre annexe makes the SM City North Edsa mall the third-biggest in the world with a gross floor area of 425,000 sq metres. according to SM Prime Holdings.

The company, a holding firm of the country’s richest man Henry Sy, also owned the world’s fourth, seventh, and 11th biggest malls, it added.

SM Prime president Hans Sy said launching the project amid the global crisis ‘speaks of how we view the longer-term prospects of the country’.

The Asian Development Bank forecast that Philippine economic growth would slow to 4.5 per cent this year and down to 3.5 per cent next year after growth of 7.2 per cent last year. Hundreds of Filipinos employed abroad, part of a huge number that remits the equivalent of 10 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product to their families back home every year, had lost their jobs, the government said.

SM Prime said tenants had signed up for 70 per cent of the leasable space in the six-storey extension to the mall. SM Prime has recently opened three other malls.