NEGROS OCC. — The Negros Trade Fair (NTF), which is the longest-running, provincially organized trade show in the country today, will celebrate its 25th year with a five-day Silver Edition event at the Rockwell Tent in Rockwell, Makati.

The Fair opens September 8 at 10 a.m. with the launch of coffee table book, Silver Tiangge, portraying the evolution of Negrense design and taste in fashion, furniture and food. Edited by Association of Negros Producers (ANP) first President, Gigi Mondoñedo Campos, the book’s foreword is written by noted writer, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, with photographs by framed lensman, Neil Oshima and contents written by Ilongga master culinaire and restaurateur Margarita Araneta Fores, prize-designer Debbie Palao and fashion iconoclast PJ Arañador.

The first NTF was born in answer to a call in the 1980s for the province to diversify from sugar production, the main economic activity then prevailing in Negros Occidental where over half of Philippine sugar was then sourced. A dramatic slump in the world market price for sugar, among other factors, battered Negros’ economy, pushing the province to get Millie Kilayko, Chairperson of the NTF Silver Edition said in the beginning, “over 2,000 workers from various livelihood communities in the province produced some 200,000 collapsible parols (lanterns) called Stars of Hope. The parols were peddled with a line saying, Isang Parol, Isang Buhay (One Lantern, One Life). With a sense of urgency and deep commitment, Negrense volunteers became merchants with a heart, helping to fuel economic change in our beleaguered province.

A quarter of a century later, pointed out Kilayko, “the province’s work force has multiplied and has generated millions of dollars and pesos into Negros Occidental’s economy, and this year’s NTF celebrates the province’s continuing story of hope, with the Fair becoming a veritable growth engine for the province’s fledgling entrepreneurs.”

The NTF at present, which is the longest-running, provincially organized trade show, providing alternative marketing opportunities for Negrense entrepreneurs, has become a veritable model for other provincial-run trade shows in the country.