MANILA, Philippines — Retail tycoon Henry Sy’s SM Prime Holdings Inc. plans to invest P12 billion this year to further expand the country’s biggest mall empire and put up new malls in fast-growing China.

After folding into SM Prime three new malls in China that were previously owned by the Sy family, company president Hans Sy said the company would henceforth build and target to open one new mall in the mainland each year starting 2010.

A new mall in Suzhou, with a gross floor area of 73,000 square meters, is under construction and will open early next year. The next two locations are in the cities of Chongqing and Zibo, which are scheduled to open in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

The planned capital spending for this year is nearly double the P6.5 billion in outlays last year as SM Prime starts the construction of malls that will be opened in 2011, company executive vice president Jeffrey Lim said.

In a briefing after the company’s stockholders’ meeting, Lim also noted that SM Prime’s revenues in the first quarter were up 15 percent over a year ago despite the slowdown in the domestic economy

Amid concerns about remittances from overseas Filipinos slowing down, Sy added that as indicated by the growth in the first two months, overseas inflows would likely continue to grow albeit at a slower pace.

Of the P12 billion in planned capital spending for this year, P6.5 billion was earmarked for the construction of new malls in the Philippines and the remaining P5.5 billion for those to be built in China.

“While we won’t be opening a China mall this year, we are laying the groundwork for three new malls to open from 2010 to 2012,” Lim said.

Sy said SM Prime had the choice of being popular by opening in large cities like Shanghai but at the end of the day, the company felt it would do better going into second- and third-tier cities.

He said the planned expansion of one-mall-a-year in China was just like SM Prime in the early 1990s. As China was a much bigger market than the Philippines, he said the company would have room to open more shopping malls in the future.