Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell says nei­ther his min­istry nor the Gov­ern­ment has any in­ten­tion of tax­ing artistes who per­form abroad or im­port­ed ma­te­ri­als used to cre­ate Car­ni­val cos­tumes.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day af­ter Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rod­ney Charles made the sug­ges­tion dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing on cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy on Wednes­day.

When Charles raised the is­sue, Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Videsh Ma­haraj and Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Re­i­ta Tou­s­saint agreed it was some­thing that could be looked at.

“In terms of the re­turn, we do not have that fig­ure. I don’t think CSO cap­tures that da­ta but it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that we could look at and it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that I think we would need,” Ma­haraj told the JSC.

Tou­s­saint added, “The per­form­ers go abroad on their own steam. They do well, they show­case, they present, pro­mote but what we have to do be­tween us (both min­istries) is to find a way to ... be more strate­gic, find a way to pack­age what we have, in a way that brings dis­cernible and pre­cise­ly dis­cernible rev­enue back to Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, Mitchell yes­ter­day made it clear such con­sid­er­a­tion was not be­ing made by Gov­ern­ment.

“Now whether or not this is a spe­cif­ic pro­pos­al, and a spe­cif­ic fis­cal mea­sure to be levied by a UNC gov­ern­ment, is a mat­ter for the UNC. How­ev­er, let me state it cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that there was nev­er and present­ly there is no rec­om­men­da­tion, sug­ges­tion, plan, or any faint idea by the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts for the im­po­si­tion of any ad­di­tion­al tax­es on any cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­er per­form­ing lo­cal­ly or abroad,” Mitchell said.

The min­is­ter al­so said such a rec­om­men­da­tion had not been put forth by the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

He said the state­ments made by Charles dur­ing the JSC sup­port­ing the mea­sure, were al­so not what his min­istry and oth­er stake­hold­ers were cur­rent­ly fo­cus­ing on for the cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“The state­ments made yes­ter­day by mem­ber Rod­ney Charles at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee are in­deed un­for­tu­nate and, in fact, runs con­trary to the work and the col­lab­o­ra­tion tak­ing place be­tween the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, and many of the em­bassies to en­sure that there is smooth pas­sage for artistes to get their work per­mits, work visas, to work and ex­port the cul­ture abroad,” Mitchell said.

In a re­lease de­tail­ing the is­sue as well, Mitchell said “such a mea­sure can have re­stric­tive im­pli­ca­tions and neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the in­dus­try”.

It added too that, “all cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers, in­clud­ing artistes work­ing both lo­cal­ly and abroad, are present­ly sub­ject to the tax pro­vi­sions of the coun­try, as are all oth­er cit­i­zens.”

Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, founder and cre­ative di­rec­tor of The Lost Tribe, said he too was un­aware that a pro­pos­al of such a na­ture had been dis­cussed for ma­te­ri­als used for cre­at­ing mas.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that many ma­te­ri­als pur­chased by mas bands are from lo­cal ven­dors who look over­seas for their prod­ucts.

“In terms of adding costs to any­thing right now con­cern­ing Trinidad Car­ni­val, I think it’s some­thing we need to have a big ques­tion mark by be­cause as you know, it is a pret­ty hefty ex­pense, not on­ly in terms of the cos­tumes, but the over­all ex­pe­ri­ence,” Ma­haraj said.

Ma­haraj al­so said many of the ma­te­ri­als used by Car­ni­val bands can on­ly be sourced from abroad.

“If you’re talk­ing about ma­te­ri­als specif­i­cal­ly, Trinidad is not a ma­te­r­i­al-pro­duc­ing na­tion. Things have to be brought in. We do have labour in Trinidad, but in terms of what we make, we still do need to bring ma­te­ri­als in,” Ma­haraj said.

“There are many small­er bands, all our pro­to­typ­ing, my­self in­clud­ed—the first place you go to is Jim­my Aboud, you go to Sama­roo’s.”