Few in­dus­tries in T&T op­er­ate with mar­gins as thin and ex­pec­ta­tions as high as Car­ni­val. For mas­quer­ade bands, where the prod­uct is not sim­ply a cos­tum,e but an all-in­clu­sive, all-im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, every com­po­nent now sits un­der scruti­ny fol­low­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s 100 per cent hike in cus­toms and ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Those mea­sures were an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo dur­ing his Oc­to­ber 13 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, in which he said that 80 per cent of the pro­ject­ed rev­enue in­creas­es in the 2026 bud­get are at­trib­ut­able to the hike in cus­toms du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

Un­der the re­vised struc­ture, du­ties on rum and spir­its dou­bled, ris­ing from $79.25 to $158.50 per cent of al­co­hol con­tent. Beer du­ties al­so dou­bled from $5.14 to $10.28 by grav­i­ty.

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian spoke to band­lead­ers and cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs who ac­knowl­edged that the fis­cal ad­just­ments have forced an un­avoid­able re­cal­i­bra­tion of in­puts, pric­ing mod­els and long-term plan­ning. Yet, with Car­ni­val 2026 al­ready locked in, most are de­ter­mined to shield mas­quer­aders from the full im­pact at least for now.

Cost shock

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) and band­leader of Dirty, Medics Car­ni­val, Mark Ayen, de­scribed the sec­tor’s re­sponse as a bal­anc­ing act be­tween fis­cal re­al­i­ty and cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tion. He ac­knowl­edged that the new du­ty struc­ture has hit the in­dus­try at a dif­fi­cult and ful­ly com­mit­ted junc­ture.

“As a band­leader, I have dai­ly and fre­quent con­ver­sa­tions with our mem­bers, and it is go­ing to pose a prob­lem, be­cause there is go­ing to be an in­crease in the over­head,” Ayen said. “Many of these bands are now all-in­clu­sive, so the onus is on the bands to pro­vide this as­pect, which in­cludes al­co­hol. So there’s, with­out a doubt, go­ing to be an in­crease in price.”

Ayen in­di­cat­ed that while bands un­der­stand the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue-gen­er­a­tion pri­or­i­ties, the tim­ing has cre­at­ed a con­straint: Car­ni­val 2026 mas band prices were al­ready an­nounced and paid for.

“It would be un­eth­i­cal for bands to change their prices at this point,” he high­light­ed. “We as band­lead­ers now have to look at av­enues where we could prob­a­bly cut on cer­tain costs so we can ab­sorb that in­crease some­how.”

He stressed that cost-cut­ting will not in­volve re­duc­tions in qual­i­ty.

“Bands no longer just pro­vide cos­tumes; they pro­vide an ex­pe­ri­ence. And all of this is part of the ex­pe­ri­ence. We have to find ways to mit­i­gate the in­crease in these costs. But it is re­al­ly go­ing to be dif­fi­cult.”

Pressed to quan­ti­fy the im­pact, Ayen said his own band’s in­ter­nal pro­jec­tions con­firm a steep rise.

“By my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with my band, we have al­ready seen a 20 per cent in­crease in our costs where al­co­hol is con­cerned,” he ex­plains. “It is a huge jump, most def­i­nite­ly be­cause of the prod­ucts that are now con­sumed with­in the ex­pe­ri­ence. It’s not pun­cheon and White Oak alone. We have to of­fer pre­mi­um drinks.”

Ayen not­ed there has been no for­mal call from TTC­BA’s mem­ber­ship for an emer­gency meet­ing, but in­for­mal con­cerns are wide­spread.

And while he wel­comes di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment, he is re­al­is­tic about the pol­i­cy­mak­ing en­vi­ron­ment: “I am al­ways open to com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­sul­ta­tion where this is con­cerned. If we have the abil­i­ty to seek guid­ance or con­sul­ta­tion, we will do so. But the Gov­ern­ment has its poli­cies, and we are here to abide by them.”

Look­ing to­ward 2027, he ac­knowl­edged that cos­tume prices will even­tu­al­ly rise.

“Ba­sic eco­nom­ics dic­tates that the cost of cos­tumes will in­crease. But again, it is not the cos­tumes, it is the ex­pe­ri­ence that is go­ing to in­crease,” said Ayen.

No cut­backs

For vet­er­an band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh of Ron­nie and Caro, the in­crease adds to an al­ready tight op­er­at­ing frame­work. His as­sess­ment is prag­mat­ic: the band has no space to re­treat on qual­i­ty, ser­vice or ameni­ties, re­gard­less of the ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial bur­den.
“At the end of the day, we have no choice,” McIn­tosh said. “We would have had our cri­sis sit­u­a­tion in place since June, so there is noth­ing we can do. We can’t in­crease prices. We can’t do any­thing. And we are def­i­nite­ly not go­ing to cut back. We’re not go­ing to cut back to af­fect our ser­vice.”

He re­in­forced that mas­quer­aders would re­ceive the full pre­mi­um ex­pe­ri­ence they paid for.

“Our mas­quer­aders can ex­pect the same lev­el of ser­vice, the same pre­mi­um va­ri­ety of drinks. We’re not go­ing to cut back at all,” he said.

McIn­tosh de­clined to cri­tique the tim­ing of the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy.

“I have no com­ment to make. All ad­min­is­tra­tions make de­ci­sions. Some­times one sec­tor is af­fect­ed, some­times an­oth­er. It doesn’t mat­ter when you do it,” he said. “We will deal with it.”

He not­ed that while reg­is­tra­tion is pro­gress­ing well, the fi­nan­cial pres­sure is re­al and on­go­ing. Asked whether over­heads have in­creased by 10 per cent or 20 per cent, McIn­tosh said the band is still work­ing through the num­bers.

“I haven’t done that yet. Price go­ing up is all I know,” he said. “You can’t cut back on the mu­sic, on mo­bile re­strooms, on DJs. There’s noth­ing we can do to cut back. We just have to live to fight an­oth­er day.”

McIn­tosh is more ex­pan­sive in dis­cussing the broad­er eco­nom­ics of T&T’s Car­ni­val, warn­ing that ris­ing costs across the ecosys­tem may be jeop­ar­dis­ing the fes­ti­val’s val­ue propo­si­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors.
“We are be­com­ing the most ex­pen­sive Car­ni­val in the world,” he ar­gues. “And that starts from air­lines. That goes from air­lines to ho­tels, Airbnbs, fete tick­ets, and cos­tum­ing. When you check the full break­down of a plane tick­et, ac­com­mo­da­tions, rentals, fetes, cos­tumes, peo­ple are spend­ing be­tween US$8,000 and US$10,000. And Amer­i­ca is not do­ing that well.”

McIn­tosh’s point is sober­ing: as Car­ni­val in­fla­tion ac­cel­er­ates, the glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness of T&T’s mar­quee prod­uct may be un­der threat.

Work With Us

For Spir­it Mas, the in­crease rep­re­sents not on­ly a fi­nan­cial shift but a chal­lenge to the op­er­a­tional sta­bil­i­ty of a band that em­ploys more than 1,000 peo­ple dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. Its fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor, Dr Justin Ram, un­der­scores the im­me­di­ate im­pli­ca­tions and the broad­er eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of the cre­ative sec­tor.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly, the in­crease in ex­cise du­ties on al­co­hol has in­creased the cost of the mas­quer­ad­er ex­pe­ri­ence that we pro­vide,” Ram said. “Our band was al­ready sold out when the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the in­creas­es, so we will ab­sorb the ad­di­tion­al costs this year with­out com­pro­mis­ing the val­ue and qual­i­ty of ser­vice we pro­vide.”

Ram em­pha­sised that em­ploy­ment lev­els will re­main sta­ble. “We will con­tin­ue to re­tain our full-time and part-time em­ploy­ees. Our band em­ploys many peo­ple, full-time staff, ca­su­al work­ers and pro­vides in­di­rect em­ploy­ment for many oth­ers,” he out­lined. “Dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, we em­ploy over 1,000 peo­ple. Many peo­ple de­pend on the band for their liveli­hoods.”
He men­tioned that Spir­it Mas is ef­fec­tive­ly a medi­um-sized en­ter­prise with sig­nif­i­cant growth po­ten­tial.

“We con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the year-round econ­o­my as an MSME, and we have con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial to con­tin­ue grow­ing and em­ploy­ing many more peo­ple,” Ram said.

His cen­tral mes­sage, how­ev­er, is a call for struc­tured pol­i­cy en­gage­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Car­ni­val sec­tor.

“We want the Gov­ern­ment to suc­ceed while we con­tin­ue to grow and con­tribute more to the econ­o­my,” Ram ex­plained. “Car­ni­val has con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial to help grow our econ­o­my, em­ploy many more peo­ple year-round, and con­tribute more to gov­ern­ment fis­cal rev­enues. We there­fore ask that the Gov­ern­ment work with us on poli­cies that af­fect our busi­ness, so that both sides ben­e­fit and con­tin­ue to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the econ­o­my.”