The no-show by Ja­maican artiste Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer at the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val on Sat­ur­day night has re­newed pub­lic con­cerns about the use and man­age­ment of this is­land’s scarce for­eign ex­change re­sources.

Pro­mot­ers of the show re­vealed late Sat­ur­day evening that Kar­tel had al­ready re­ceived US$950,000 of his US$1.3 mil­lion per­for­mance fee. They not­ed that the bal­ance had been ful­ly se­cured and would have been pro­vid­ed to Kar­tel had he trav­elled to T&T for the show.

That bal­ance due to Kar­tel does not take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion pay­ments out­stand­ing to oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al artistes who were al­so sched­uled to per­form and there­fore ex­pect­ed to be com­pen­sat­ed in US dol­lars. This rais­es the ques­tion of how these pro­mot­ers ob­tain such sig­nif­i­cant sums of US cur­ren­cy, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing a pe­ri­od when lo­cal com­mer­cial banks have been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duc­ing cred­it card and oth­er ac­cess to US cur­ren­cy.

In the ab­sence of ab­solute clar­i­ty from the con­cert pro­mot­ers, it is be­ing sug­gest­ed that in Kar­tel’s case, they col­lab­o­rat­ed with US-based part­ners who in­vest­ed in the show, and that the bulk of the US cur­ren­cy sent to Kar­tel like­ly came from US bank sources.

But even if that were the case, the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from the Kar­tel show would pri­mar­i­ly be in T&T cur­ren­cy.

Con­se­quent­ly, any prof­its in­tend­ed for for­eign in­vestors would still need to be con­vert­ed in­to US cur­ren­cy, which could po­ten­tial­ly put a strain on the lo­cal re­serves.

This is not to im­ply in any way that Kar­tel does not de­serve the fee he re­quest­ed. That is cer­tain­ly not for us to say, but for the artiste to set his price and for fans and pro­mot­ers to de­ter­mine how much they were will­ing to pay to see him per­form.

But based on his sold-out per­for­mances through­out the re­gion and in the Unit­ed States, where tick­et prices can reach as high as US$990, it would ap­pear no price is too high for some Kar­tel fans to pay fol­low­ing his re­lease from jail on a mur­der charge on Ju­ly 31, 2024.

In fact, be­tween now and Sep­tem­ber, he is ful­ly booked and set to per­form in St Kitts, At­lanta, At­lantic City, Am­s­ter­dam, Paris, Lon­don, Bal­ti­more, Man­ches­ter, Kenya, Mal­ta, and Birm­ing­ham, where he is like­ly to ask for at least the same amount he re­quest­ed from his T&T en­gage­ment.

The key dif­fer­ence be­tween these lo­ca­tions and T&T, how­ev­er, lies in the chal­lenges or­di­nary cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es face in ob­tain­ing even small amounts of US cur­ren­cy to con­duct le­git­i­mate ac­tiv­i­ties.

The scarci­ty of US cur­ren­cy has re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions on funds for trav­el, on­line shop­ping, and ed­u­ca­tion­al and med­ical ex­pens­es abroad, as well as im­por­ta­tion chal­lenges that have im­pact­ed many small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

With the sit­u­a­tion as it stands, the pre­vail­ing per­cep­tion has been that large com­pa­nies with es­tab­lished re­la­tion­ships with com­mer­cial banks and high im­port vol­umes are favoured in forex al­lo­ca­tion, which puts SMEs at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage.

But the Kar­tel de­ba­cle has now turned the spot­light on the forex con­sump­tion by the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, with many, in­clud­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, now seek­ing clar­i­ty on the mat­ter.

The min­is­ter has al­ready re­quest­ed a re­port on the sourc­ing of forex for the con­cert and is ex­pect­ed to share his find­ings with the na­tion, which we hope will be cou­pled with a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of this coun­try’s for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion, aimed at ad­dress­ing the ex­ist­ing in­equal­i­ties.