Baguio Blooms Exposition on; 62 join

BAGUIO CITY -- Sixty-two exhibitors are now displaying their products at the new site of the ongoing Baguio Blooms Exposition and Exhibition at the compound  of the Baguio Convention Center as part of the 25th edition of the Panagbenga, popularly known as the Baguio flower festival.

Malou Galiste, chairperson of this year’s Baguio Blooms Exposition and Exhibition and Session road in Bloom, said the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. released 300 applications for interested participants of the month-long exhibit of handicrafts and flower-inspired products but only 80 exhibitors responded to the call for the submission of intent to join one of the major highlights of the flower festival.

She said of the 80 exhibitors that submitted their completed applications for stalls in the exhibit area, 18 reportedly backed out because of the recent Corona Virus Disease (COVID) 2019 scare that resulted to the eventual re-scheduling of the grand opening parade of the festival and other major highlights of the Panagbenga next month.

The BFFFI official said of the 62 exhibitors, 18 are landscapers who joined the carpet of flowers and vertical landscaping competition of the flower festival.

She added the BFFFI submitted a request to the local government for extension of the event from its earlier scheduled commencement on March 8 to April 15 to allow exhibitors recover their investments for their participation in said activity.

Major Benjamin B. Magalong expressed his support to the proposed extension of the ongoing Baguio Bloom Exposition and Exhibition at the Baguio Convention Center considering the untimely postponement of the major activities of the Panagbenga due to the COVID scare to allow the exhibitors to be able to gain from their participation in the said event.

Galiste said the BFFFI will not  collect additional fees from the exhibitors when the said activity will be extended because the request for the additional time for the exhibition is a gesture of the organizers to make sure that the participants will be able to gain from the said event.

The request to extend the conduct of the month-long Baguio Blooms Exposition and Exhibition from March 8 to April 15 now pending deliberation with the local legislative body.

Previously, the conduct of the former market encounter, now known as the Baguio Blooms Exposition and Exhibition, was done within the Camp John Hay during the early years of the Panagbenga before it was transferred to the Burnham Lake Drive until last year.

The Baguio Blooms Exposition and Exhibition s one of the major income-generating activities of the Panagbenga to help in defraying the expenses that will be incurred by the major highlights and the community led events of the festival considering that the local government already pulled out its P4 million annual subsidy to the festival paving the way for the conduct of the 25th edition as a purely private initiative of the foundations the local government will only swerve as a supporting cast in the conduct of all the events that had been lined up for the festival. -- Dexter A. see