Car­ni­val is colour! Car­ni­val is mas! But who rakes in the 'big bucks' af­ter the Car­ni­val has passed?

Da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice CSO show that in 2017, there were 37,448 vis­i­tors to the is­land specif­i­cal­ly for Car­ni­val, to­geth­er spend­ing $335 mil­lion. In 2018 a ten per cent de­cline was ev­i­dent in both ar­eas with 33,873 vis­i­tors and an ex­pen­di­ture of $319 mil­lion.

Es­ti­mat­ed Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mi­sion sub­ven­tions to 30 events over the pe­ri­od 2016-2019:

2016: $230 mil­lion

2017: $168 mil­lion

2018: $90 mil­lion

2019: $ 140 mil­lion

Ac­cord­ing to the CSO re­port, NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters said that the com­mis­sion was al­ways in the “red” and mon­ey it re­ceives from the Gov­ern­ment is used to pay out­stand­ing bills from the pre­vi­ous year. This year NCC owes over $40 mil­lion to con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers, among oth­er stake­hold­ers.

In last Wednes­day's CNC3 Busi­ness Watch host­ed by Judy Kan­hai, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Pe­ters broke it down to dol­lars and cents and sought to ex­plain the “eco­nom­ics” of T&T Car­ni­val.

The Sun­day Guardian re­caps the con­ver­sa­tion in Q&A style.

Guardian Me­dia:

Do you have an idea of the eco­nom­ic im­pact of Car­ni­val?

Gads­by Dol­ly:

In 2016 we did an eco­nom­ic im­pact as­sess­ment of Car­ni­val. One was or­dered last year as well, which came through the EDAB (Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board), but we have not got the re­sults as yet of that one. But in 2016 when we looked at it, the fig­ure was just about $373 mil­lion gen­er­at­ed from Car­ni­val and we have or­dered one for this year and we ex­pect to see what are the flows for 2019.

Has there been a de­cline in that fig­ure post-2016?

The fig­ure is linked re­al­ly to the tourism num­ber that comes in for Car­ni­val, that two-week pe­ri­od that we mea­sure around Car­ni­val and the spend per year. If there is less in any one year, then you would ex­pect that fig­ure would go down a bit. But as it is, it is very ap­prox­i­mate to that fig­ure and it all de­pends on how tourism fluc­tu­ates.

In 2018, there was a de­cline in the num­ber of vis­i­tors to the is­land to par­tic­i­pate specif­i­cal­ly in Car­ni­val. Would you have an idea of what led to that de­cline? And what are your sug­ges­tions on in­creas­ing our Car­ni­val ar­rivals?

I think from in­cep­tion Car­ni­val in T&T is some­thing that we (lo­cals) en­joy…it's for us. And that, I think, dis­tin­guish­es our Car­ni­val from some of the oth­ers, which may have come about through ac­tu­al plan­ning for a tourism event. For ex­am­ple, our Car­ni­val is man­aged through the Min­istry of Cul­ture. In the re­gion, Car­ni­vals which may have arisen be­cause of their need for at­tract­ing tourists, they are man­aged by their Min­istry of Tourism which has a big say and makes a big dis­tinc­tion on how our Car­ni­val in com­par­i­son is man­aged. One of the things we have to look at is the rise in oth­er Car­ni­vals (re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al) and the fact they are be­ing mar­ket­ed very heav­i­ly. In T&T we can't say that we have been mar­ket­ing our Car­ni­val to its fullest po­ten­tial over the years, and there­fore, any de­crease we may be able to at­tribute it to the fact. We need to mar­ket our Car­ni­val more ag­gres­sive­ly to be able to bring more peo­ple if we want to main­tain our mar­ket share.

If this is recog­nised to be the short­fall, then why have we not been mar­ket­ing our Car­ni­val ag­gres­sive­ly?

Again, be­cause our Car­ni­val has been for us...our Car­ni­val arose out of our re­bel­lion…our ex­pe­ri­ence. And what we have done with our Car­ni­val, all through the years, is some­thing that we en­joy. For ex­am­ple, when we have our J'Ou­vert, the pa­rade of the band or so, it's not done with the au­di­ence in mind. Car­ni­val is a street par­ty that peo­ple en­joy and it is be­com­ing more and more so. If we have to mar­ket a “prod­uct” for Car­ni­val, this is where we need a lot more in­ter­ven­tion by Min­istry of Tourism and Tourism Trinidad and we have been hav­ing a lot of these dis­cus­sions, be­cause what we would have to do is to cre­ate a prod­uct around the tar­get au­di­ence we would like to at­tract. We have not had that kind of con­sid­er­a­tion in any ma­jor way over the years, it's been all about what T&T en­joys for Car­ni­val.

Should we open our own mas fac­to­ries in­stead of out­sourc­ing?

Cer­tain­ly, these are the busi­ness of the area peo­ple can look at, de­ter­mine where are the niche mar­kets, what they can do, do their busi­ness mod­els and get in­to the busi­ness, most cer­tain­ly it is pos­si­ble.

Would the Gov­ern­ment ac­com­mo­date this in re­gards to sup­port?

When we look at Car­ni­val and what our mod­el of Car­ni­val is, we ask, is it an eco­nom­ic en­ter­prise? It is not, and has nev­er been and when we think about if every­thing we had to do has to make eco­nom­ic sense then our Car­ni­val would look very much dif­fer­ent from what it looks like right now. The dis­cus­sion would arise then, about if we are re­al­ly chang­ing the cul­ture or just chang­ing every­thing to make mon­ey. So in terms of Gov­ern­ment step­ping in to make a fac­to­ry so that Car­ni­val cos­tumes can be made, that is not some­thing, that has been in con­sid­er­a­tion, and just look­ing at it from the on­set, I can see a lot of prob­lems with that mod­el be­ing con­tin­ued. What I can see though, is that it is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty for those in­volved in mas to look at, do some cost­ings and maybe come to the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss how they can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed and sup­port­ed.

Chang­ing the face of Car­ni­val

Speak­ing to the need to change the face of Car­ni­val, Pe­ters en­dorsed Gads­by-Dol­ly's views and added, “We have giv­en the world Car­ni­val but we have not brought the world to our Car­ni­val. And be­cause of that, we have to now do more in­ter­na­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing, we have to now take pat­tern from some of the Car­ni­vals we have spawned in the world and use it as a busi­ness, as a de­lib­er­ate prod­uct to bring peo­ple to T&T.”

Guardian Me­dia:

Have our Car­ni­val events be­come rou­tine­ly re­dun­dant?

Pe­ters:

No, not at all, in fact, far from it. We have been putting on a great show of dif­fer­ent va­ri­ety. Our Car­ni­val is the on­ly Car­ni­val in the world with a por­tray­al Car­ni­val and we play mas all over T&T. When you come to our Car­ni­val you can go to Princes town and find a dif­fer­ent mas from San Fer­nan­do, and you can go to San Fer­nan­do and find a dif­fer­ent mas from San­gre Grande or you may go to Ma­yaro and find a dif­fer­ent mas, and so no.

The rev­enue cur­rent­ly gen­er­at­ed from Car­ni­val, can we do bet­ter?

Yes, I do...but as I said be­fore, if you have a prod­uct and it's not sold, you can have the best prod­uct in the world and you're not sell­ing it, then it is just your prod­uct and that's all it is.

How much mon­ey has NCC re­ceived in 2019 from gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion?

The al­lo­ca­tion this year is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $139 mil­lion. But so far, in terms of “draw­down”, it was 25, 27, and 38.

In light of your pre­vi­ous com­ment that the NCC sur­vives “pay cheque to pay cheque”, why hasn't the NCC tried to be more self-suf­fi­cient rather than re­ly heav­i­ly on gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion?

The NCC has to re­ly on the gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion be­cause Car­ni­val is a gov­ern­ment sub-vent­ed type of event. How the Gov­ern­ment gets back its rev­enue from Car­ni­val is through vis­i­tors. We spend TT mon­ey, which is $7 or $8 dol­lars to US$1, so if we are spend­ing a mil­lion dol­lars, it means all we are spend­ing re­al­ly is a hun­dred and some­thing thou­sand US dol­lars. It's not that the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to get it back in­stant­ly when they give the NCC the sub­ven­tion. The Gov­ern­ment doesn't on­ly re­ly on tan­gi­bles for mon­ey but in­tan­gi­bles as well.

Of the 30 plus events NCC sub vents, which are prof­itable?

None have been prof­itable re­al­ly. It is just like the Gov­ern­ment putting on one big fete that the Gov­ern­ment and the peo­ple of T&T pay for. How­ev­er, Car­ni­val spawns the most amounts of in­stant jobs, that you can find in this coun­try.

But what's the point in spend­ing mil­lions and get­ting no re­turn? Shouldn't this change?

Yes, it should, and this is what we are now as­pir­ing to do. And that's why you see so many changes tak­ing place. The NCC is putting on more things and is in­vest­ing in some of the prof­itable or not so prof­itable events that we have, try­ing to make these prof­itable so that we can help to try and make back some of the mon­ey.

BOX

It's one of our most ex­trav­a­gant so­cial pro­grammes fund­ed by tax­pay­ers—econ­o­mist

Econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li tells the Sun­day Guardian, “There is no de­lib­er­ate busi­ness of Car­ni­val.” She said any busi­ness that hap­pens as a re­sult of Car­ni­val is “pe­riph­er­al and sim­ply con­se­quen­tial of the na­tion­al 'par­ty' that is car­ni­val”.

“In my view, it is one of our most ex­trav­a­gant so­cial pro­grammes fund­ed by and largesse of tax­pay­ers. I say that be­cause even though year af­ter year the ques­tions are asked, “how much did we re­al­ly spend on Car­ni­val or what was the in­vest­ment on the re­turns”? And the an­swers are nev­er forth­com­ing and we con­tin­ue to not put any­thing in place to en­sure mech­a­nisms are in place to an­swer these ques­tions,” Sage­wan-Al­li said.

The fail­ure to do so, she be­lieves, shows there is no burn­ing de­sire to make Car­ni­val a busi­ness.

She added that if Car­ni­val were a busi­ness, we would dis­sect the Car­ni­val prod­uct in­to those that must be prof­it gen­er­at­ing and self-sus­tain­ing and those which for so­cial and cul­tur­al rea­sons, we would wish to per­pet­u­ate and as a con­se­quence, we are pre­pared to sub­sidise. In so do­ing, we would then go about de­vel­op­ing the com­bi­na­tion of a Car­ni­val prod­uct based on this type of mod­el.

“There ap­pears to be no as­pect of where the State or the tax­pay­ers' mon­ey go in Car­ni­val. Be­cause year af­ter year it (Car­ni­val, all as­pects), goes back to the Trea­sury for its fund­ing.”