Trading on capital’s reputation

Hanoi Department of Industry and Trade executives have submitted to city authorities a plan to build nine additional large-scale trade centres in the city. The construction of these trade centres will start from 2013 and finish before 2020.

In light of Hanoi’s trade development draft master planning developed by the city’s Department of Industry and Trade five out of these nine trade centres are regional-level shopping malls to be positioned in Long Bien-Gia Lam new urban area, Soc Son district, Chuc Son township, Hoa Lac new urban and Phu Xuyen new urban areas.

Specifically, a world-class trading plaza will be built in West West Lake new urban area. Two international trade fair and exhibition centres will be set up in Tu Liem district’s My Dinh area and Dong Anh district’s Dong Anh urban area. Each trade centre will have a minimum area of 50,000 square metres and over 200,000sqm as maximum area.

The capital city is currently home to 14 trade centres, averaging one trade centre every two districts, lower than that of Ho Chi Minh City which sees 1.5 trade centre per one district.

In fact, despite the still modest number of trade centres, many existing venues found it hard to lure tenants and customers. The shifting of some Hanoi’s traditional marketplaces into modern trading plazas in some previous years did not bring high dividends as expected like the case with Trang Tien Plaza or Hang Da trade centre.

Despite occupying a prime location in the heart of Hanoi, developer Trang Tien Company Limited of Trang Tien Plaza had to resell it to Singapore’s leading retail group DFS for revamping and restructuring the trading plaza’s business strategy from late 2011.

The Hang Da trade centre project developed by Song Hong Construction Joint Stock Company and Nhat Nam Joint Stock Company was completed in late 2010. Many stalls at the centre could not find tenants until the present despite a number of marketing campaigns.

Developers of some big trade centres recently rolled out in Hanoi like Grand Plaza in Cau Giay district, Picomall in Dong Da district and Savico Mega Mall in Long Bien district saw large stall numbers in their buildings jus empty space at this point of time.

Statistics show that a chain of big trade centres would come onto the market from now to 2014 such as Keangnam Landmark Tower and Indochina Plaza Hanoi (Cau Giay district), Usilk City (Ha Dong district), Hapulico Complex (Thanh Xuan district) and Hanoi City Complex (Ba Dinh district).

According to CBRE Vietnam chief executive officer Marc Townsend, Hanoi’s sharp continuous growth in retail sales in the past three years was good news to trade centre project developers.