'Prices of Pampanga lanterns to go up'

MABALACAT CITY, Pampanga  – Lantern makers here advised consumers that now is the best time to buy Christmas lanterns when prices are much cheaper since most people are preparing for the coming All Saints’ Day.

“Now is the time to buy lanterns since it will be peak season after Nov. 1 then, the prices could go up as much as 40 percent,” said Mary Anne San Pedro, 33, a lantern businesswoman from this province that is reputed to be the world’s Christmas lantern capital.

San Pedro said that unlike pyrotechnic products whose prices plunge on New Year’s Eve, the prices of Christmas lanterns are not expected to dip substantially even after Christmas Day.

“That’s because the demand for Christmas lanterns remains even up to the Chinese New Year (in January),” she said.

San Pedro, who owns the Santa Sleigh Lantern store along the Dau highway near the exit of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) here, said that balikbayans and foreigners often buy lanterns to bring back to their homes or friends abroad after spending the Christmas holidays in the Philippines.

“They do this after Christmas, so we convert the volts of the lanterns from 220 to 110 for use abroad,” she said.San Pedro said a capiz star lantern measuring three feet in diameter costs P2,800. The lantern has 21 light bulbs that dance in five patterns.

A similar sized lantern with colored plastic cover would cost much less at P700, but they have only six light bulbs each with only two lighting patterns.