DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Con­sid­er­a­tion is be­ing giv­en to tax­ing lo­cal artistes who per­form abroad, as well as ma­te­ri­als im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go for Car­ni­val de­signs.

The rec­om­men­da­tion was made by a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy yes­ter­day.

The JSC, chaired by Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon, sought to in­quire in­to the ef­fi­ca­cy of T&T’s cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy and op­por­tu­ni­ties for strength­en­ing its cul­tur­al and tourism prod­ucts.

Gopee-Scoon lament­ed the fail­ure of the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs and the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts to stream­line and for­malise cul­ture as a busi­ness.

Rod­ney Charles, the UNC’s MP for Na­pari­ma, pro­posed a po­ten­tial so­lu­tion to gen­er­ate rev­enue through the tax­a­tion of chut­ney, so­ca and ca­lyp­so artistes who per­form across the re­gion and wider world. He sug­gest­ed con­sult­ing a ter­tiary-lev­el aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tion such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go to de­ter­mine a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties that could ben­e­fit the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR).

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and Arts Videsh Ma­haraj said it is an op­tion.

“In terms of the re­turn, we do not have that fig­ure. I don’t think CSO cap­tures that da­ta but it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that we could look at and it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that I think we would need,” Ma­haraj said.

Mean­while, though she ac­knowl­edged that artistes per­form abroad in­de­pen­dent­ly of the State, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Re­i­ta Tou­s­saint said the coun­try may be able to ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly.

“The per­form­ers go abroad on their own steam. They do well, they show­case, they present, pro­mote but what we have to do be­tween us (both min­istries) is to find a way to ... be more strate­gic, find a way to pack­age what we have, in a way that brings dis­cernible and pre­cise­ly dis­cernible rev­enue back to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

How­ev­er, the JSC chair re­peat­ed­ly sought to re­mind the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries of both min­istries that cul­ture is a busi­ness that ought to be for­malised.

“It re­al­ly has, to my mind, to do with the for­mal­i­sa­tion of these busi­ness­es be­cause in ef­fect, it’s a busi­ness that you’re run­ning, if you are, in fact, earn­ing rev­enue, whether it’s lo­cal­ly or for­eign or so and there is that prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go with many small and mi­cro busi­ness­es that are not for­malised and reg­is­tered and, there­fore, it’s dif­fi­cult to track where they are, what they con­tribute, what con­tri­bu­tion they should be mak­ing to the Gov­ern­ment etc,” Gopee-Scoon said.

“So it’s an area of for­mal­i­sa­tion that has to be en­cour­aged and I would like to hear just the views of the Min­istry of Tourism, on the whole for­mal­i­sa­tion of not just Car­ni­val but of your pro­duc­ers, your source, your ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, your so­ca per­form­ers, your bands, etc. Now, the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion re­quires that all of these en­ti­ties be reg­is­tered as well.”

Mean­while, the Di­rec­tor of Cul­ture at the Tourism Min­istry, Tej Ram­lo­gan, said artistes are reg­is­tered with the min­istry in or­der to re­ceive grants and tax ex­emp­tions. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that more in­for­ma­tion is need­ed to im­prove the sys­tem.

Fur­ther­more, Charles ex­pressed his be­lief that wire ben­ders and seam­stress­es were los­ing out due to the im­por­ta­tion of beads and oth­er ma­te­ri­als from Chi­na for Car­ni­val cos­tumes, rather than seek­ing out lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers. He said tax­es may en­cour­age cos­tume de­sign­ers to sup­port lo­cal, re­vi­talise a large cross-sec­tion of the in­dus­try, and even­tu­al­ly lead to the ex­port of cos­tumes to oth­er coun­tries.

In re­sponse, Ma­haraj not­ed that tax­es cur­rent­ly ex­ist on these items. He said the re­al is­sue lies in find­ing skilled labour.

“A cou­ple of decades ago, there were a lot of per­sons, a lot of seam­stress­es and a lot of those types (of) ac­tiv­i­ties. But, per­sons would have vir­tu­al­ly moved away from it as op­por­tu­ni­ties were be­ing cre­at­ed in oth­er ar­eas of the econ­o­my. It’s some­thing we could look at but, to get the labour back there, be­cause that is heav­i­ly labour in­ten­sive, it’s go­ing to have to be quite at­trac­tive in terms of pay­ments for com­pen­sa­tion for per­sons,” he said.

The con­sen­sus at the JSC was that the State can­not ac­cu­rate­ly quan­ti­fy the earn­ings for Car­ni­val and oth­er events, which needs to be reme­died.

Ram­lo­gan ref­er­enced Mar­di Gras in New Or­leans, which he said had da­ta on every­thing, from ho­tel oc­cu­pan­cy to tax­es earned more than a decade ago.

“I was for­tu­nate to be a part of a con­fer­ence in 2012 and the may­or of New Or­leans was say­ing, right up, they knew ex­act­ly how many per­sons were there in the ho­tel busi­ness, how many cooks were there, what is the av­er­age salary. They could have said ‘this is gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment’ but they al­so said, we are guar­an­teed this much in tax­es at the end of it. And this is where I feel Trinidad To­ba­go needs to go,” he said.