Leah So­rias

The top prize for the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch may be $400,000 less this year. Cul­ture Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald said yes­ter­day that Caribbean Pres­tige Hold­ings Ltd, founders of the show, could not keep last year's TT$1 mil­lion prize for the Pow­er So­ca Monarch be­cause of the re­duc­tion of the sub­ven­tion to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion by the Gov­ern­ment, so re­duced it to US$100,000. She said be­cause NCC re­ceived more than $900,000 less to pay out to Car­ni­val groups this year, the min­istry was forced to plead with Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers to "hold" all prize monies. "NCC got $122,194,200 this year, and last year they got $123,146,000 to cov­er all over­all ex­pens­es for Car­ni­val," she said, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry St Ann's of­fice.

"This means that their (NCC) mon­ey was re­duced by $951,800,000," she said.

She said Pres­tige Foun­da­tion re­ceived $2 mil­lion in prize mon­ey this year but they could not keep the So­ca Monarch prize at $1 mil­lion.

"They heed­ed the call by the Min­istry, that all the oth­er stake­hold­ers re­tain their prizes from last year," Mc­Don­ald said. Chair­man of Pres­tige Foun­da­tion William Munroe said yes­ter­day that be­cause of the in­creased cost of pro­duc­tion of the show, the com­pa­ny was forced to de­crease its $1 mil­lion prize. How­ev­er, he re­mained tight-lipped about the new fig­ure, stat­ing that this would be de­lib­er­at­ed by the com­pa­ny over the week­end. "The world would not ac­cept medi­oc­rity and be­cause of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis, there was no way that the prize could have re­mained at $1 mil­lion," he said. "If I could have done bet­ter, I would have."

He said so far 250-plus artistes have reg­is­tered for the com­pe­ti­tion and they were in­di­vid­u­al­ly in­formed of the de­crease in prize-mon­ey.

On the brighter side of things, Munroe said, there would be an in­crease in the top prize for the Groovy So­ca Monarch. Last year's prize of $150,000, he not­ed, will be in­crease to more than $200,000. "There were a lot of com­plaints about the prize for the Groovy last year so that's why we de­cid­ed to in­crease it," he added. He high­light­ed that even the "per­for­mance prize" for this year will in­crease from $50,000 to be­tween $65,000 to $75,000. "The on­ly prize that will be de­creased is the first prize for Pow­er So­ca, noth­ing else," he said. Dead­line for reg­is­tra­tion for the com­pe­ti­tion is next Fri­day, he said. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Graeme Suite, TSTT's man­ag­er, me­dia re­la­tions and cor­po­rate, said the com­pa­ny did not re­duce its spon­sor­ship of the event. "We re­main ful­ly com­mit­ted to spon­sor­ing the event," Suite said.