SM Prime Holdings Inc., the mall developer of the SM Group, is eyeing a total of 10 SM supermalls in China in the next five years to contribute 10 percent of its revenues from the present 2 to 3 percent.

This was revealed by company president Hans Sy to reporters at the sidelines of the environment conference dubbed “Green Retail Agenda: Moving Towards Sustainability” at the SMX Convention Center.

“We are opening one mall each year in China until 2013 or 2014,” Sy said.

At present, the company has existing three malls in China and has just expanded its Xiamen branch.

Sy said they are looking at Sozhou, Chongqing and Zibo in the Xiandong province for their new outlets.

“Our focus is China because we feel that in five years we would have saturated the Philippine market. China is a growth area that would significantly contribute to our revenues to 10 percent from the current 2 to 3 percent,” Sy said.

“China should make a difference in our “ he said.

He, however, said that the company’s overall growth target for the year is only 8 percent.

“So, we are quite close with the target,” he said.

Sy said that it’s his dad, Hensy Sy Sr., who set the target of 10 percent growth rate for its supermalls way back in 1995 when they only made P500 million.

Domestically, the company’s landbanks in Metro Manila would enable them to build 50 supermalls yet even as the company is pushing its expansion into the south and the northern part of the country.

The company is also planning to open at least four outlets a year locally.
Sy, however, said they would be concentrating more on the construction of full-size malls rather than supercenters for efficiency purposes.

“We will concentrate on full-size malls rather and we will be cutting down on supercenters because people would really prefer to go to a full-size mall rather than supercenter or hypermarkets, which have no department store component,” he said.

At present, SM Prime has three supercenters in Pasig, Muntinlupa and Las Pinas.

Sy also said they would reopening the Rosales, Pangasinan branch on November 27 to the public after spending P40 million for rehabilitation from the damage caused by typhoon Pepeng.

SM Sta. Mesa will also be fully operationalized on Nov. 26.

Sy, however, said that they did not incur losses from the typhoons because they have insured, but they have decided to reopen the affected mall immediately because there were over 4,000 workers in Rosales alone who were out of job.

“The most important thing is to give the jobs back. We realized that the best charity that we can do is give back to people their jobs,” he said.