AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

De­spite Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment with some as­pects of the 2023 To­ba­go Car­ni­val’s or­gan­i­sa­tion, the is­land’s Chief Sec­re­tary has con­grat­u­lat­ed the or­gan­is­ers, say­ing it was a re­sound­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic suc­cess.

Dur­ing a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) me­dia con­fer­ence on its fi­nan­cial strat­e­gy for 2024 yes­ter­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine spent a few min­utes to re­flect on the week­end of events which ran from Oc­to­ber 27-29.

Au­gus­tine said he was tak­en aback by the amount of peo­ple on the is­land, some­thing which he said he had not seen in sev­er­al years. He said this fur­ther jus­ti­fied their de­ci­sion for To­ba­go to have its own event.

“From an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, the rea­son for hav­ing a stand­alone Car­ni­val is so that we can draw peo­ple to the is­land. We need to in­crease our tran­sient pop­u­la­tion and bring peo­ple to the is­land, be­cause when they come, trans­porta­tion ser­vices are used, ac­com­mo­da­tion, meals. I am in the su­per­mar­ket over the car­ni­val week­end and peo­ple bounc­ing me down ask­ing for self­ies, peo­ple I don’t know all over the place,” Au­gus­tine said jok­ing­ly.

He said from all in­di­ca­tions, To­ba­go re­ceived much more than the $12,590,600 it in­vest­ed in­to the fes­tive week­end.

“I want to com­mend the play­ers be­cause that cer­tain­ly has done more than the 12 mil­lion dol­lars in­put for our eco­nom­ic space in terms of the spend on the space,” Au­gus­tine said be­fore mak­ing a com­par­i­son to Trinidad’s Car­ni­val.

“When you see in Trinidad they were spend­ing one hun­dred and some­thing mil­lion on a “Taste of Car­ni­val”, how much of that you think the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing back? The idea is not for the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to make back that mon­ey, it is an in­vest­ment so that the eco­nom­ic space makes more than that and I am con­fi­dent that our eco­nom­ic space has made more than that over the pre­ced­ing week.”

Au­gus­tine took note of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s es­ti­ma­tion that the Car­ni­val in­creased busi­ness on the is­land by 500 per cent.

“I drove through town the day be­fore and I saw the whole stretch tak­en over with tents, peo­ple pitched their tents all over the pa­rade route, so you got a chance to ben­e­fit and earn and that was the in­tent be­hind it,” Au­gus­tine said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary said to cap­i­talise on this suc­cess in the new fis­cal year, the THA will be look­ing at im­prov­ing the air­bridge.

“We al­ready saw the in­crease with cruise ships mov­ing to 70-plus cruis­es for this sea­son up from 40, so we are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion and we want to see a lot more of that. So, in the com­ing days that is one of the things we are tar­get­ing, how do we get much more air­lift in­to the To­ba­go space, both in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and do­mes­tic. Be­cause I have no in­ter­est in be­moan­ing what Caribbean Air­lines does or doesn’t do. I have an is­land to run and we need to get the peo­ple to the is­land, be­cause if we be­lieve in our hearts that this is the great­est lit­tle is­land on the plan­et, then we must want to share it and make mon­ey,” Au­gus­tine said.(See more on Page 18)