Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters said a sug­ges­tion he made while he served as cul­ture min­is­ter the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment to re­cruit Tri­ni-born US rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj to sell T&T's Car­ni­val was shut down be­cause she curs­es too much.

Pe­ters made the ad­mis­sion be­fore the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee which ex­am­ined the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) ex­pen­di­ture and in­ter­nal con­trols for the pe­ri­ods 2010 to 2018 on Wednes­day.

Pe­ters said T&T should have utilised the ser­vices of Mi­naj to pro­mote our Car­ni­val in­ter­na­tion­al­ly- the same way Bar­ba­dos had cap­i­talised on its singing sen­sa­tion Ri­han­na.

"When I was a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment and Nic­ki Mi­naj was in the height of her ca­reer and pub­lic­i­ty, I told them to let us use Nic­ki Mi­naj as an am­bas­sador to T&T's cul­ture...that we could talk about al­liances. And you know what was the an­swer ...Nic­ki Mi­naj does cuss too much. That is what they tell me. I don't think any­body could cuss more than Ri­han­na," Pe­ters said.

He said peo­ple still have the wrong mind­set about Car­ni­val, stat­ing "If I had my way in the land of Car­ni­val, in the home of Car­ni­val, we should spend more mon­ey to have bet­ter-look­ing things," Pe­ters said.

"Nei­ther a wise man or a fool could work with­out his tools. And the tools to achieve all the things is some­thing called mon­ey."

In re­sponse to a com­mit­tee mem­ber Ran­dall Mitchell about plans for tourists and vis­i­tors to ex­pe­ri­ence Car­ni­val through­out the year, Pe­ters said, "T&T is lack­ing a per­ma­nent Car­ni­val vil­lage....a city, one where peo­ple can come year round when the Min­istry of Tourism would en­cour­age peo­ple to come to this coun­try."

Pe­ters said our coun­try has been wast­ing mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly by dis­card­ing cos­tumes that could be rent­ed to tourists which is done in some for­eign coun­tries.

"We don't have the fi­nances to do that kind of in­fra­struc­ture. We need that. Trinidad is the home of Car­ni­val and there is noth­ing about Car­ni­val that you can see in T&T ex­cept to come here for Car­ni­val days. That shouldn't be. We have more things about Car­ni­val in the Smith­son­ian In­sti­tute than we have in T&T."

He said Cana­da, New Or­leans, New York, Mi­a­mi and coun­tries in the Caribbean have ben­e­fit­ted fi­nan­cial­ly with its Car­ni­val events, while T&T con­tin­ues to boast that we have the best Car­ni­val in the world "but it does ab­solute­ly noth­ing for us."

Pe­ters said sev­er­al pro­pos­als were for­ward­ed to Gov­ern­ments show­ing how much mon­ey Car­ni­val can gen­er­ate, but no one has tak­en them se­ri­ous­ly.

He said re­search has shown that Car­ni­val can rake in be­tween TT$600 mil­lion to $1 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

The NCC chair­man said to ad­ver­tise T&T's Great­est Show on Earth in Times Square, New York, for one month, comes with a price tag of US$50,000, which we need­ed to do.

"The mon­ey that we (NCC) get­ting can­not af­ford to pay for it. Maybe we don't pay enough em­pha­sis on Car­ni­val bring­ing a cer­tain kind of re­turn to us."

He said T&T could have the best prod­uct in the world and if no­body knows about it "your prod­uct is not go­ing to sell."

This Car­ni­val, Pe­ters said the NCC in­vest­ed $6 mil­lion in the So­ca Monarch and $4 mil­lion in the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch shows, which have the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate rev­enue but was al­lowed to floun­der due to lack of spon­sor­ship.

These shows, Pe­ters said cre­at­ed icons like Machel Mon­tano, Ravi B and Kees.

"We are try­ing to make in­vest­ments in these prod­ucts. We see the po­ten­tial to have a fi­nan­cial re­turn. We are now cal­cu­lat­ing the re­turns from both events. Any busi­ness you in­vest in you do not ex­pect to get an im­me­di­ate re­turn."

In go­ing for­ward, Pe­ters said NCC al­so has been brain­ing storm­ing to pro­mote the Point Fortin Bor­ough Day, stat­ing that there are tan­gi­ble and in­tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to be gained.

An­oth­er area NCC has been fo­cus­ing on, NCC's CEO Col­in Lu­cas said was T&T's tra­di­tion­al mas, stat­ing that peo­ple are all too fa­mil­iar with the biki­ni and beads con­cept world over.

"No oth­er Car­ni­val, I dare say, can put on a dis­play of tra­di­tion­al mas, like we can."

"If we can at­tract one per cent of the world in­ter­est­ed in such mas," Lu­cas said, we would have the edge.

Lu­cas said the NCC was fight­ing a bat­tle with the beads and biki­ni that they could not win.