However, instead of building residential quarters and industrial zones, they are now focusing on retail and tourism real estate projects.

To date, all the three large retail chains, including South Korean Lotte and Vietnamese Saigon Co-op and Vingroup, are present in Mekong Delta’s provinces.

Saigon Co-op is a pioneer in exploring the southwestern market. However, not all expansion plans have succeeded.

In 2003, Co-op made its presence in Cao Lanh City of Dong Thap province. However, it had to give up its place to another enterprise. Only in 2014 did Saigon Co-op return to Cao Lanh. 

The retailer has opened one more supermarket in Sa Dec town of the province and is considering an investment opportunity in Hong Ngu town.

Lotte does not hesitate to expand its network to non-HCMC provinces. In October 2015, the 11th Lotte Mart, covering an area of 18,000 square meters, was inaugurated in Can Tho City with the investment capital of $60 million.

After eight years of focusing on real estate projects in HCMC, real estate developers now tend to eye land in the southwestern region of the country.

The South Korean group last July opened a shopping mall, 10,000 square meters in floor area, in Nha Trang City. This is its 13th shopping mall opened in the last eight years of operation in Vietnam.

Discussing the plan to develop a network of 60 shopping malls and Lotte Marts by 2020, Hong Won Sik, Lotte Mart Vietnam’s general director, said the number of shopping malls in non-HCMC provinces would account for 85 percent of total.

Lotte Mart prefers building supermarkets itself, accepts the land lease and considers merger & acquisition (M&A). It does not like the mode of joint venture with local partners, an analyst commented.

In 2013, Lotte bought a land plot with an area of 7,500 square meters from Nam Bay Bay Company to build Lotte Phan Thiet, a shopping mall in Binh Thuan province.

Vingroup, a big real estate developer, has geared up with its plan to expand the network. 

After starting the Vincom Plaza project in Cao Lanh City, in July 2016, it had a working session with the local authorities on the project on building Vincom shopping mall in Sa Dec town.

To date, Vingroup has invested nearly VND1 trillion in the projects in Dong Thap province. Unlike other enterprises, which develop property projects for separate purposes, Vingroup develops many different items at the same time in some localities.

A lot of investors have followed Vingroup, flocking to small provinces to develop tourism real estate projects. In mid-2015, SAPro kicked off the 5-star condotel & resort project in Ben Tre province.


Thanh Mai