Me­dia, cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary con­sul­tant Dr Kris Ram­per­sad be­lieves this year's bud­get should con­tain the nec­es­sary pro­vi­sions to push T&T's arts and cul­tur­al sec­tor from one of de­pen­den­cy to self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty. She said if that was not done T&T would be miss­ing a cru­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my. In a press state­ment yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad point­ed out that arts and cul­ture were a bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try in oth­er coun­tries.

She added: "It is the kind of re­turns from mu­se­ums, from per­for­mances abroad, from sales and down­loads of a range of cul­tur­al prod­ucts in a world hun­gry for new en­ter­tain­ment on the one hand..."On the oth­er (hand), from ful­fill­ing the crav­ings from new re­flec­tions of self and iden­ti­ty that our mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism can pro­vide." She added that arts and cul­ture have the po­ten­tial to help peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties to have sus­tain­able liveli­hoods. She not­ed, how­ev­er, that the struc­tures, sys­tems and in­vest­ments nec­es­sary which would help T&T to take ad­van­tage of that was "sore­ly lack­ing."

She said the po­ten­tial of art and cul­ture was not on­ly found in T&T's mu­sic, song, dance, dra­ma or lit­er­a­ture but al­so in out­side-the-box in­dus­tries of fash­ion and cui­sine. "We are sit­ting down on a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar rev­enue earn­er in lit­er­ary tourism, but there are as yet no re­al fa­cil­i­ties by which we can cap­ture this in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est," Dr Ram­per­sad not­ed. She said it was Gov­ern­ment's du­ty to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that would en­able and fa­cil­i­tate that.

She said it was al­so Gov­ern­ment's du­ty to pro­mote pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships with­in in­di­vid­u­als and groups in the sec­tor, as well as in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies and to en­sure that no one group or groups of or­gan­i­sa­tions had the mo­nop­oly and ac­cess to these fa­cil­i­ties. Dr Ram­per­sad added: "The 2010-2011 bud­get should present clear mea­sures to pro­vide ef­fec­tive tax and oth­er in­cen­tives to the cre­ative sec­tor for the de­vel­op­ment of tal­ents, prod­ucts and com­mu­ni­ties, along with a short, medi­um and long-term vi­sion that gives cul­ture its right­ful place at the cen­tre of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, not just piece­meal and to­kenism."