SM commits funds for disaster resilience

Regional property giant SM Prime Holdings Inc. has committed to spend about a tenth of its annual capital outlay to boost the disaster resilience design of its property assets, asserting that investing in sustainability makes good business sense.

SMPH, which has 56 shopping malls in the country, has taken major steps to ensure the longevity of its developments and safeguard host communities, company president Hans Sy said during the annual general meeting of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) in London.

In the Philippines, SMPH operates a chain of 56 shopping malls with a total gross area of over seven million square meters and an average daily foot traffic of over four million people.

The country’s largest property developer has about 15,000 tenants in its shopping mall empire.

“My experience has proven that investing in resilience of our company’s assets makes good business sense. Depending on the location and assessment of the project, around 10 percent of Capex (capital expenditure) is allocated to disaster resiliency,” said Sy, the only Filipino to be part of the UNISDR’s Private Sector Advisory Group. Doris Dumlao-Abadilla