Baguio City finalizing plans for Panagbenga 2023
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — Baguio City is finalizing preparations for the Panagbenga as the city government and the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI) get ready for the Panagbenga flower festival in February 2023.
Engineer Aloysius Mapalo, supervising city tourism operations officer, said the moth-long flower festival will open on February 1, 2023. The festival will feature street dancing and float parades as well as a the weeklong Session Road in Bloom.
He said the city is still waiting for the decision of the national government on the state of public health emergency, which President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. extended until the end of the year, to see what public health standards will be implemented during the festival.
The annual Panagbenga, which has been going on for more than two decades, will now be a purely private initiative of the BFFI after the city government decided to cut its subsidy for the event.
Mapalo believes that the resumption of the flower festival activities will definitely help efforts to safely revive Baguio City's economy, which was hit by the pandemic.
Panagbenga drew huge crowds to Baguio City 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 at a formal launch in coming weeks.
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