The Gov­ern­ment spent an es­ti­mat­ed $90 mil­lion on Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions this year.Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas said it was mon­ey well spent, as the fes­ti­val was a suc­cess.

He spoke at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair.Dou­glas in­sist­ed that the Car­ni­val had grown in all ar­eas and its suc­cess should not be judged by a few emp­ty seats in the stands at cer­tain events.

The re­gion­al Car­ni­val had in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, said Dou­glas, and point­ed to Ch­agua­nas and his own con­stituen­cy of Lopinot/Bon Air West. He said larg­er num­bers of peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed than in pre­vi­ous years.

He said the au­thor­i­ties were suc­cess­ful in de­cen­tral­is­ing Car­ni­val.He cau­tioned, how­ev­er, that there was still need for im­prove­ment in cer­tain ar­eas.Asked to com­ment on the changed for­mat for the last ma­jor pre-Car­ni­val event–the Di­manche Gras show–he said on­ly that a re­view of that event had al­ready been done.

Dou­glas was more forth­com­ing in agree­ing with a call by sev­en-time band of the year win­ner Bri­an Mac­Far­lane for big­ger in­cen­tives to be giv­en to en­cour­age band­lead­ers to do more to im­prove mas in Car­ni­val.

Mac­Far­lane said the first prize should be in­creased from $300,000 to $3 mil­lion and the sec­ond and third prizes should al­so go up.Dou­glas said he wished the mon­ey could be found to in­crease the prizes and the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to do­ing what­ev­er it can to en­sure this hap­pens at the ear­li­est time.

On Mac­Far­lane's de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing a band, Dou­glas said he was sad­dened to see him go and he was hop­ing that the band­leader would re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion and keep pro­duc­ing a band.