MALL builder and operator SM Prime Holdings Inc. will spend roughly P900 million for its 28th mall, to be build in Bacolod City in the central Philippines staring in March, Inquirer sources said.

The mall will have an area of 60,000 square meters, the sources said.

SM Prime earlier said it would hike its 2007 budget for new malls and land acquisition to P6-P7 billion.

Before it built Mall of Asia, the country’s largest mall, in the Manila Bay reclamation area, SM Prime spent an average of P5 billion a year for new malls.

SM malls are being built in Taytay town and Muntinlupa City, both in Metro Manila, funded with borrowings and internally generated cash.

This year, SM Prime has opened five malls: SM Lipa in Batangas province, SM City Santa Rosa in Santa Rosa City, SM City Clark in Pampanga province, Mall of Asia, and SM Supercenter Pasig in Metro Manila’s Pasig City.

SM Prime now has 27 malls totaling 3.6 million square meters in floor area.

Meanwhile, SM Investments Corp., which controls 53 percent of SM Prime, said it had christened its development project in the Manila Bay reclamation area, where Mall of Asia is situated, as SM BayCity.

SM Investments has spent P2 billion on infrastructures in the 60-hectare SM BayCity, where it will spend P3.5 billion to develop its business process outsourcing facility called OneE-com Center and its SMX Convention Center. Both projects are to be completed in the third quarter of next year.

SM Prime has spent P7 billion to develop Mall of Asia.

SM BayCity is to be developed into a business district. It is where SM Investments and its subsidiaries have their corporate centers, and will have office buildings, an exhibition and convention center, a sports arena, a row of hotels facing the bay, and a commercial ferry terminal.