MANILA, Philippines – SM Prime Holdings, the Philippines’ largest property developer, is planning to develop residential projects in China.

‘As a consolidated group, we can now go to China with residential because before we only have malls. We are coming in now as one company SM Prime,’ SM Prime president Hans Sy.

SM Prime, he said, will employ the same formula in China that it used in developing residential condo projects in the Philippines.

‘It is something similar to the Philippines. I think the formula will work well in China because we are customer-oriented and we do understand the users,’ he said.

SM Prime has five malls in China located in Xiamen, Jinjiang, Chengdu, Suzhou and Chongquing.

Next year, SM Prime is expected to open two malls in China – SM Zibo and SM Tianjin.

Sy remains bullish about the Chinese economy despite fears of a slowdown.

‘China, the whole economy may have slowed down. But their growth is still 7.5%, I don’t know if you can call that a slowdown,’ he said.