KEVON FELMINE
Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) fig­ures show that tourist spend­ing dur­ing Car­ni­val 2023 was an es­ti­mat­ed $420 mil­lion. Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Videsh Ma­haraj gave this fig­ure to the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) yes­ter­day when it con­vened to ex­am­ine the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion’s (NCC) man­age­ment of Car­ni­val 2023 ac­tiv­i­ties and fol­low-up on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the rec­om­men­da­tions made in the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee’s 27th re­port.

Ma­haraj said the NCC re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $146,371,000 for its an­nu­al op­er­a­tions and to host Car­ni­val 2023. The CSO re­port­ed that vis­i­tor ar­rivals be­tween Feb­ru­ary 3-21 were over 27,000. Based on the av­er­age vis­i­tor spend over the pe­ri­od, es­ti­mat­ed at $15,313, there was a to­tal in­jec­tion in­to the econ­o­my by tourists of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $420 mil­lion.

Ma­haraj said this es­ti­mate does not cap­ture spend­ing from lo­cals or in­come gen­er­at­ed from eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty ex­clu­sive to Car­ni­val.

The CSO’s web­site shows the $419,193,375 record­ed for last Car­ni­val was the sec­ond high­est in the past sev­en years. T&T record­ed $458,155,961 in tourist dol­lars for Car­ni­val 2020 with 37,861 vis­i­tors for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

NCC Chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters said T&T has been ex­port­ing Car­ni­val to the world for years. He said the NCC has been mak­ing it­self avail­able for pro­mo­tion at all Car­ni­val events world­wide to en­sure that the T&T prod­uct re­mains sus­tain­able and bet­ter than any oth­er coun­try. While Brazil and oth­er coun­tries have biki­nis and beads sim­i­lar to T&T’s Car­ni­val, Pe­ters said this coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al mas sets it apart from the rest of the world.

“Like you will find bur­ro­keet and you will find it nowhere else. Like you will pay the dev­il. You will find it nowhere in the world. You will find the jab jab, some of that you will find in Mex­i­co, but it is pre­dom­i­nate­ly a Trinidad and To­ba­go thing. There are tons of stuff, the bat, all those are tra­di­tion­al mas that we have in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and those are what we con­sid­er tra­di­tion­al,” he said.

That is why the NCC pays more at­ten­tion to tra­di­tion­al mas, as it wants these as­pects of Car­ni­val to live on Pe­ter added.

NCC Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Giselle Mar­tin said brand­ing T&T as the “Moth­er of all Car­ni­vals” or “Home of Car­ni­val”, along with the Can­boulay Ri­ots re-en­act­ment and Pierot Granade are in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights the NCC hopes to own be­fore Car­ni­val 2024.

Re­spond­ing to com­mit­tee mem­ber Lau­rence His­lop’s ques­tion about whether T&T ex­port­ed Car­ni­val or rev­el­ry, Pe­ters said it was both.

“We have ex­port­ed both be­cause peo­ple did not use to wine in Car­ni­val be­fore we went out there and showed them. Peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go crit­i­cise when we wine and stuff but that is our form of dance that we have ex­port­ed out of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Some of the char­ac­ters I speak about, we just got back from Labour Day, and they nev­er used to have any­thing like that.”

Pe­ters said Labour Day or­gan­is­ers are ask­ing the NCC to host work­shops, which it plans to do. He said the NCC has been con­sid­er­ing a mu­se­um and con­tin­ues to work with re­gion­al car­ni­val com­mit­tees to col­lect mas pieces so peo­ple can come and see what T&T Car­ni­val has to of­fer.

PAC chair­man Bridgid An­nisette-George point­ed out that there is a dis­play at the Pen­ny Bank and Pe­ters ex­plained that it is over­seen by a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion over­sees it. The NCC is look­ing for a na­tion­al mu­se­um in scope, in­clud­ing a build­ing space. He said the one at the Pen­ny Bank does not have the space to ac­com­mo­date all the NCC’s ar­ti­facts.