ANP sees 50% drop in exports
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The Association of Negros Producers is girding for a 50 percent drop in exports this year due to the global economic crisis, its president Mary Ann Colmenares said yesterday.

Last year the economic crunch had already caused the ANP exports to drop by about 30 percent, she said.

ANP has more than 80 members who produce furniture and furnishings, food, lifestyle fashion, gifts and housewares, with about 20 percent of them exporting their products, she said.

Gov. Isidro Zayco yesterday said he will coordinate with Social Services Secretary Esperanza Cabral and Deputy Presidential Spokesman Anthony Golez on the assistance that can be provided to Negros Occidental farm workers during the “dead season.”

Zayco was reacting to a statement of Golez that he was willing to be the voice of the province in Malacañang in its bid for the release of P30 million from the Sugar Amelioration Fund to be used as rice subsidy.

On Saturday, Golez also disclosed that the DSWD was prepared to also assist the out of work farm  workers affected by the dead season  in the sugar industry.

The mother of the regional spokesman of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Western Visayas was killed in a grenade explosion yesterday in Brgy. Liwayway, Santa Rosa in Nueva Ecija.

Capt. Lowen Gil Marquez, chief of the AFP Civil Relations Service in Region 6, yesterday said his 67-year-old mother, Clemencia, died instantly, after a fragmentation grenade, thrown into her room at their residence, exploded.

Marquez said he suspects that the New People’s Army may be behind the incident, as the arrested grenade thrower was identified as Winston Garcia, who, he claimed was an “asset” of the rebel group.