Netherlands-based mall developer ECC International Real Estate Hanoiannounced plans to invest 400-500 million USD over the next five yearsto develop five to six malls in Vietnam and Thailand.
Itsfirst resort-style mall, to cost 2.9 billion baht (96 million USD), isscheduled to open in the Thai city of Chiang Mai next December.
Tjeert Kwant, president and chief executive officer of the company,said ECC will announce its first project in Vietnam , a mall in HCMCity , in the next three months.
"Vietnam is recognisedas a different kind of market from Thailand, and our first shopping mallin HCM City will have a ‘downtown mall' concept with a small footprintand maximum utilisation of retail space," Kwant told the Thai Englishlanguage newspaper The Nation.
The company decided toshift its investment focus from Europe to Southeast Asia around sixyears ago since the continent's shopping-mall market was reachingsaturation.
"We are entrepreneurial, and we have startedour business in Thailand with a good feeling. We feel the potentialis 100 percent both in Thailand and Vietnam ," Kwant said./.