Kali­fa Clyne

With just one week be­fore the Dig­i­cel In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch fi­nals, Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tions founder William Munro yes­ter­day an­nounced that the first place prize will again be $2 mil­lion. The win­ner of the Play Whe Groovy So­ca Monarch ti­tle will take home $500,000. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Munro said prize mon­ey will re­main the same as last year with the ex­cep­tion of some ad­di­tion­al in­cen­tives. "Spon­sors saw the val­ue and the mag­ni­tude of the event and they came out and sup­port­ed so we were able to main­tain the prize struc­ture," he said.

He re­vealed that prizes would be giv­en to par­tic­i­pants based on pre­sen­ta­tion with first, sec­ond and third place prizes val­ued at $75,000, $50,000 and $25,000 re­spec­tive­ly. "The Gov­ern­ment said last year that the prize mon­ey they of­fered was a one-off ges­ture and Min­is­ter of Arts and Mult­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters had sug­gest­ed cor­po­rate fund­ing as a way to main­tain the prizes," he said. He added that to car­ry down the prizes would have brought down the val­ue of the com­pe­ti­tion. He said the So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion is one that draws in­ter­na­tion­al tourists to the coun­try and played an im­por­tant part in the econ­o­my. "When you have some­thing good we have to main­tain it," said Munro.