SM Prime Holdings, Inc., one of Southeast Asia’s real estate giants, still sees a good business opportunity in China despite the slowdown that the world’s second largest economy is facing, which has been sending negative signals to global markets since the start of the year.

Hans Sy

For 2015, China’s economy grew at is slowest pace in 25 years with full-year growth at 6.9 percent and fourth quarter figure only at 6.8 percent.
 
But according to SM Prime President Hans T. Sy, this wouldn’t be reason why the Philippine’s largest real estate company would back out from its projects in China.
 
“China is a very big country. It’s almost as good as four countries combined, so while they are affected by too much volatility, no matter what you say, their growth is still 6.8 percent, which is quite good,” Sy said in an interview with reporters during the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Annual Reception for Banking Community.
 
Having a significant amount of projects in China, the Philippine’s largest real estate firm has always been vocal about its growth prospects in that country.
 
“In China, I’m still looking into double digit growth in terms of sales. We may be affected a little because of the depreciation but SM Malls is not into financial business. We’re very positive as far as SM Malls are concerned,” he added.
 
In terms of establishing a residential portfolio in China, he maintained that it will be business as usual for the company.
 
“We are doing it one project at a time for residential,” Sy said.
 
When asked if SM Prime is looking to expand into other countries, Sy only said they’ve been “enticed” to go to some new markets but there’s no definite plan for that yet.
 
“SM is very conservative but when we go in, we go in big. It is too early to say but not that will not be this year,” Sy said, adding that some of these countries are still within the ASEAN region.
 
In November, SM Prime already started constructing its first ever condominium development in China.
 
SM Prime executive vice president Jeffrey Lim said in an earlier interview that the company already got the approvals from the Chinese government to put up a high-rise residential development beside the company’s five year old mall in Chengdu.
 
It was reported earlier that SM Development Corp. (SMDC), the residential arm of SM Prime, may spend as much as P6 billion for this project, which would comprise of four towers.
 
Lim said it would still take two years before the project would see a completion but the company expects “a good velocity” in terms of the take-up.
 
SM Prime is also targeting to start developing very soon its new malls in China which will be located in Yangzhou province and Tianjin. For the one in Tianjin, it has already been announced that it would be the biggest SM mall to be developed under the company’s entire history.