Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and The Arts Ran­dall Mitchell has said that the bud­get for the Taste of Car­ni­val 2022 has not yet been ap­proved and has added that the Gov­ern­ment has asked the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to keep the spend­ing down.

He told a news con­fer­ence Wednes­day af­ter­noon, "I be­lieve it will be a lot less than $30 mil­lion."

The NCC has been asked to meet with stake­hold­ers and present a Bud­get with­in 48 hours.

That bud­get, he said, "must be in align­ment with the scale and lim­its of what the ac­tiv­i­ties will be in this three-week pe­ri­od".

"NCC is be­ing chal­lenged not on­ly to squeeze ef­fi­cien­cies where they can but to avail them­selves of lack of spon­sor­ships," Mitchell said.

He said there was no Bud­getary ap­pro­pri­a­tion for Car­ni­val 2022 be­cause at that time it didn't seem pos­si­ble that it was go­ing to be pos­si­ble.

But now that a Taste of Car­ni­val is be­ing pre­sent­ed, he said the NCC's fig­ure is not yet ap­proved, not­ing that there has been a lot of dis­cus­sion in the pub­lic do­main about the fig­ure and about the arrange­ments at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

"In T&T we all know we have a keen spir­it of crit­i­cism," he said.

He said, how­ev­er, that the Gov­ern­ment re­mains con­cerned that what­ev­er takes place un­der the re­mit of the NCC must be done with health and safe­ty con­cerns.

"We are see­ing some pods go­ing up. They are for seat­ing arrange­ments for be­tween six and nine. The new op­er­a­tional arrange­ments un­der Pub­lic Health guide­lines will in­volve com­pli­ance of­fi­cers on site," he added.

He said seat­ing will al­so be avail­able in the Grand Stand "so­cial­ly dis­tanced and spaced".