Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Cab­i­net has ap­proved $2.3 mil­lion in fund­ing to sup­port 147 un­spon­sored steel­bands for Car­ni­val 2026.

As state en­er­gy com­pa­nies with­draw spon­sor­ship from sev­er­al bands, Gov­ern­ment said this has not se­vere­ly ham­pered this year’s com­pe­ti­tion.

Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin an­nounced the de­ci­sion dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing. She said the fund­ing would pro­vide $20,000 to each con­ven­tion­al steel­band and $10,000 to each sin­gle-pan band, cov­er­ing ex­pens­es in­clud­ing chroming, re­pairs, new in­stru­ments and trans­porta­tion.

Ben­jamin said the fi­nal num­ber of ben­e­fi­cia­ries in­creased from an ini­tial 145 to 147 fol­low­ing ad­di­tion­al re­quests.

Last year, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted $2.42 mil­lion to Pan Trin­ba­go for 149 un­spon­sored steel­bands.

The an­nounce­ment comes amid spon­sor­ship cuts by state en­ti­ties. Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd end­ed its sup­port for San Fer­nan­do’s Skif­fle Bunch and Siparia Del­tones, in­form­ing Skif­fle Bunch in a No­vem­ber 27, 2025, let­ter signed by act­ing CEO Ker­ry Ram­per­sad.

Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) al­so ter­mi­nat­ed agree­ments with La Brea Nightin­gales, Cou­va Joy­lan­ders and To­ba­go’s Steel Ex­plo­sion.

In a Sep­tem­ber 3, 2025, let­ter, NGC said it had re-eval­u­at­ed ex­ist­ing con­tracts and could not con­tin­ue un­der the present agree­ment.

The con­tract end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2025.

Asked whether de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela could af­fect Car­ni­val par­tic­i­pa­tion, Ben­jamin said band reg­is­tra­tions were con­tin­u­ing and com­mit­ments were be­ing ho­n­oured, adding it was too soon to draw con­clu­sions.