BAGUIO CITY – The Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI) earmarked around PhP17 million to bankroll the month-long activities lined up for the 29th edition of the Panagbenga or Baguio Flower Festival that will run from February 1 to March 2, 2025.
BFFFI president Freddie Alquiros said the funds to be used by the foundation in sustaining the conduct of the activities are the internally-generated funds of the foundation coming from sponsors, income-generating events of the festival, and pledges, among others.
He claimed that the foundation continues to get support from the city government and concerned government agencies through the use of the parks and public places for free and other non-monetary commitments considering that the flower festival is a private-sector led and government-supported endeavor.
In 2020, the city government removed the PhP4 million annual subsidy it had been providing the foundation as support to sustain the annual conduct of the flower festival activities.
Alquiros claimed that since then, it was the foundation that solely generated the needed resources to sustain the annual conduct of the flower festival proving that the foundation is capable of running such magnitude of events.
According to him, the annual budget of the flower festival is considered lean and mean compared to the funds earmarked for other major crowd-drawing events in other parts of the country where local governments have substantial stakes in the annual staging of said festivals.
For this year, the foundation decided to increase the prizes of the winners of the grand streetdancing and drum-and-lyre competition and the grand float parade which means added resources that had been included as part of their financial projections in the staging of the flower festival.
For his part, BFFFI Chairman Emeritus lawyer Mauricio G. Domogan disclosed that the previous arrangement for the PhP4 million subsidy from the city government was that PhP2 million will come from the national government while another PhP2 million will serve as the city government’s counterpart which had been successfully executed for a certain number of years.
Domogan pointed out that the foundation continues to look for other resources that can be used to sustain and improve the annual staging of the flower festival that is now part of the elite list of festivals in the world under the International Festivals and Events Association. By Dexter A. See