BAGUIO CITY -- Tourists are expected to flock here again for the famous Panagbenga or Baguio Flower Festival which will be held on February next year.
The city government and the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI) will formally launch the activities lined up for the crowd-drawing event Dec. 12 at the city hall grounds simultaneous with the regular flag raising ceremony.
Supervising City Tourism Operations Officer Engr. Aloysius Mapalo said the coordination is being finalized with the foundation, as well as the program of activities for next year’s flower festival.
He said, the 2023 flower festival will still open on February 1, 2023 with the elimination round of the participating elementary and secondary schools to the grand street dancing parade, aside from the other traditional events during the month-long festivities.
He added that the grand street dancing and grand float parades will still be conducted on the last weekend of February which will be followed by the famous week-long Session Road in Bloom and the formal closing ceremony.
However, the city tourism officer claimed they are still waiting for the decision of the national government on the state of public health emergency which was declared by President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to last until the end of the year to ascertain the implementation of the minimum public health standards to prevent the further spread of the emerging variants of the deadly virus.
The annual conduct of the Panagbenga will now be a purely private initiative of the flower festival foundation after the city government decided to cut off the subsidy it had been granting to it through the years.
Mapalo stipulated that the resumption of the flower festival activities will definitely help in sustaining the ongoing efforts of concerned government agencies and the local government to gradually and safely revive the heavily impacted local economy due to the ongoing pandemic.
The Panagbenga had been serving as the city’s major crowd drawing event for over two decades until it was hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mapalo said that the final schedule of the flower festival’s traditional events and other activities will be announced during the launching of the festival in the weeks to come.