CABANATUAN CITY—Small and medium entrepreneurs and government officials here gave a thumbs-up sign Tuesday for the innovative food-processing product of a Nueva Ecija noodle maker.

The Aliaga Veggie Canton Noodles starting Wednesday have become a regular fare in over 400 government-financed Tindahan Natin in Central Luzon, as well as in other outlets in Metro Manila, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said during the product launching at the National Food Authority (NFA) training center here.

The noodle products are made of micronutrients-loaded squash, carrot, malunggay and saluyot.

The DTI picked it as Aliaga town’s entry in the government’s One Town, One Product list.

Cesar Cruz, the Aliaga Veggie Canton Noodles maker, said it took him almost 10 years of “trial-and-error” approaches, attending food-processing technology seminars and promoting stints in va-rious trade fairs in Luzon to come up with his product.

He formally opened his small processing plant in Aliaga in 2005.

At its launching Tuesday, Cruz demonstrated the ways of cooking his squash, carrot, malunggay and saluyot canton noodles. All the four vegetable noodles could also be cooked as lomi (in thick gravy), guisado (sauted) and mami (with sauce).

“It’s delicious, more delicious than the ordinary canton noodles,” said one of the attending Tindahan Natin owners.

The occasion also coincided with the forming of the Nueva Ecija chapter of the Tindahan Natin outlets association.

Tindahan Natin is a microfinancing program of the DTI, NFA and the Department of Social Welfare and Development which involves lending of P20,000 capital to qualified village-based retail- store owners.

DTI Nueva Ecija director Brigida Pili said Cruz’s vegetable noodles also gave a ready market for vegetable farmers who often suffered huge losses for lack of market.

“Aside from promoting local product innovation, it also gave a backward linkage to the farmers,” she said, adding that the vegetable noodles are “a wise substitute to the popular instant noodles that are suspected of having carcinogenic ingredients.”

Each of the four Aliaga Veggie Noodles, citing findings of Department of Science and Technology  studies, contains micronutrients that prevent major human ailments.

APPROVED investments of foreign investors in the first quarter was not enough to pull up the amount of total approved investments in the said period, which declined by 6.3 percent, according to a report released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) on Thursday.

THE Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) is set to bid out the contract for the construction of the P10-billion Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) Terminal 2 in the third quarter of the year, with at least three foreign groups already making known their interest to build it.

THE Philippine government is eyeing to maintain the existing P25 per kilogram price for subsidized rice distributed by the National Food Authority (NFA) in public markets, an official of the NFA said.

THE country’s palay production during the lean months of July, August and September is expected to reach 3.45 million metric tons (MMT), or 9.5 percent higher than paddy production for the third quarter of 2007, according to the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS).

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—Eleven years since its inception, benefits from the Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Act (Afma) have yet to be felt by farmers and fishermen.

CABANATUAN CITY—Small and medium entrepreneurs and government officials here gave a thumbs-up sign Tuesday for the innovative food-processing product of a Nueva Ecija noodle maker.

LUCENA CITY—The provincial government of Quezon jump-started biofuel production in the country when Quezon Gov. Raffy Nantes signed on Wednesday a memorandum of agreement (MOA)  with the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP)and the Philippine National Oil Co.-Alternative Fuels Corp. (PNOC-AFC) for the massive production and processing of jatropha in the entire province.