Ascendas, Asia's leading business space solutions provider, is planning to more than triple its investment in China its second-largest market in the next five years, a top company executive said.

The Singapore-based industrial real estate developer has so far poured S$700 million ($458 million) in China since it entered the market in 1995.

"We are planning to triple that number in five years and the total investment would probably reach $1.64 billion then," Chong Siak Ching, the company's president and CEO told China Daily.

"China continues to be a very strong potential market for us," the CEO said, citing its dynamic economy and the booming manufacturing and services industries.

The company's core business in China includes industrial parks. One of its flagship projects is Suzhou Industrial Park, a multi-billion-dollar government project between Singapore and China.

"We offer a wide range of facilities and services such as ready-built and built-suit space and we are expanding and introducing more services to China," the CEO said.

The company has recently introduced IT parks to China and has set up such facilities in Nanjing, Xi'an and Dalian, the country's major business process outsourcing (BPO) bases.

"China's thrust toward higher value-added and more knowledge-intensive activities such as BPO will drive demand for such facilities. This is an area where Ascendas can leverage its expertise," Chong said, citing her company's reputed IT park projects in India's Bangalore.

The Singaporean business space provider, which has operations in 10 cities across China, is not planning to enter more new areas, she said. "Deepening our presence in the existing cities is one of the keys for us."

Ascendas, Chong said, will focus on "east and north" in its expansion, referring to the cities in the Yangtze River Delta and cities such as Beijing, Tianjin and Dalian.

The Singaporean real estate developer, which has assets worth $3.3 billion under its management, has branched out into commercial buildings sector in China recently.

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