SM Prime Holdings, Inc., one of Southeast Asia’s real estate giants, already secured necessary approvals to build a residential project in China, which paves the way for the construction of the company’s first ever condominium development in the world’s second largest economy.

SM Prime executive vice president Jeffrey Lim said in an 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.

“We are going to do ground-breaking [this week]. So we are going to the ground-break then hopefully we can start selling the units next year,” Lim said. Ground-breaking of a project signals the start of construction of the project.

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.

The project cost for each tower, according to Lim, will be about “P1.4 billion to P1.5 billion per tower”.

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.

Before the end of the year, SM Prime is targeting to start developing its new malls in the Yangzhou province and Tianjin, which would be the biggest SM mall that will be built in the company’s history.

Last week, SM Prime raised P20 billion after investors gobbled on its latest bond issuance.

SM Prime specifically issued P15 billion worth of Fixed Rate Peso Retail Bonds, with an overallotment option of up to P5 billion.

Lim said the bonds will be officially listed at the Philippine Dealing Exchange Corp. in December.

The bonds has been issued into two series — Series D with maturity of 5.25 years, which carry an interest rate of 4.51 percent per annum, and Series E with maturity of 10 years, carrying an interest rates of 4.79 percent per annu

SM Prime President Hans T. Sy earlier said this issuance will largely support funding for the company’s mall expansion programs in the coming years.

By the end of this year, SM Prime will increase its number of malls to 55 in the Philippines with an equivalent mall footprint of 7.3 million square meter in terms of gross floor area (GFA), while next year, it will open six new malls and expand two existing mall. Combined, the additional mall space is 571,631 square meters.

For 2016, SM Prime sees the second quarter as the perfect timing to tap the debt market anew.