The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, opened its third store in Beijing yesterday, which means the firm now has 52 outlets in China.

It will sell about 20,000 items, including fresh food, clothes, home appliances and cosmetics. It will also provide a number of services.

The new superstore, located in the city's downtown Xuanwu District, covers a total area of 18,000 square metres.

Stanley Yu, vice-president of Wal-Mart China, said the company plans to speed up its expansion in China next year.

It currently has a presence in 24 cities across the country; the first store was opened nine years ago.

Earlier last month, Wal-Mart's chief executive officer, Lee Scott, was quoted by the Economic Daily as saying that the firm expects to increase its outlet number to 62 by next year.

These new stores will be scattered across the current operating region, according to the CEO during his annual trip to the country. The visit took him to Beijing; Shanghai; Wuhan, Hubei Province; and Changsha in Hunan.

The Xuanwu store in Beijing is the third store opened in China by Wal-Mart within a month. The other two are in Changsha and Jinjiang, a city in Fujian Province.

Later this week the company will open another store in the smaller city of Yuxi, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, Dong Yuguo, a spokesman for Wal-Mart China, told China Daily.

This move demonstrates the US retailer's ambition to expand into second-tier cities in China, he said.

Other smaller cities earmarked for Wal-Mart stores by the end of this year include Weifang in Shandong Province and Wuhu in Anhui.

The company also said that it is conducting market research into opening stores in even smaller cities, such as Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province.

"We see surging demand for consumption in small and medium-sized cities, which offers us a good chance to expand our investment in China," Dong said.

Besides opening more stores, Wal-Mart will further enlarge its procurement in China.

The retailer now has about 19,000 suppliers across the country.

Its direct and indirect purchases from China exceeded US$18 billion last year. If the company were a country, it would be China's fifth largest export market.

By the end of last month Wal-Mart had invested 1.7 billion yuan (US$210 million) in China and employs more than 27,000 staff.

Wal-Mart had global sales of US$285.2 billion last year. It has topped the Fortune Global 500 rich list for four consecutive years.

The US-based company employs 1.6 million people worldwide, operates over 6,000 stores and has nearly 140 million customers in ten countries.

(China Daily December 8, 2005)