MALL DEVELOPER AND OPERATOR SM Prime Holdings will open three more malls this year and expand two existing ones despite the tough business environment caused by the global economic crisis.

SM Prime will open this year SM City Naga in Camarines Sur, SM City Rosario in Cavite and SM City Pamplona in Las Piñas City. It will also open the Sky Garden at the newly expanded SM City North Edsa and will expand SM City Rosales in Pangasinan, according to a regulatory filing by parent firm SM Investments Corp.

The company earlier estimated that its 2009 expansion program would entail a capital outlay of at least P10 billion.

“By the end of the year, SM Prime will have 36 malls nationwide and three malls in China, with an estimated gross floor area of 4.9 million square meters,” SMIC said, referring to the total space it could rent out to mall lessors.

Once completed, this year’s expansion would mark a 14-percent increase in SM Prime’s leasable floor area, which stood at 4.3 million square meters at the end of 2008.

Despite the deepening economic crisis, the company’s mall expansion program this year is even faster than the 9-percent expansion it implemented last year when it added only 353,000 square meters to its total selling space.

The expansion plan is part of the company’s thrust of opening smaller malls in more geographic locations nationwide, as opposed to its original thrust of building large malls in selected metropolitan areas.

Last year, SM Prime opened SM City Marikina, SM City Baliwag and the SM Supercenter Rosales, while it expanded The Annex in SM City North Edsa—making it the third-biggest mall in the world—and The Atrium in SM Megamall.

SM Prime operates 33 malls around the country as well as three malls in Xiamen, Jinjiang and Chengdu, China.

At the same time, SMIC added that its supermarket unit was planning to add 16 more outlets and five “hypermarkets” in 2009 as part of its expansion plan.

Again, this pace is faster than that set in 2008 which saw SM supermarkets open in Edsa Pasay, Parkmall Cebu, Nagtahan, Marikina, Tanay, North Edsa 2 and Cubao, in addition to two hypermarkets.

The total selling area of SM supermarkets and hypermarkets stands at 256,007 and 142,316 square meters, respectively.

SMIC also owns the “Makro” warehouse club chain — which currently has 14 stores — through its parent holding company Rappel Holdings Inc. The total net selling area of Makro is 107,555 square meters.