Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in­curred a $7 mil­lion loss on the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence and To­ba­go Car­ni­val last Oc­to­ber.

Af­ter spend­ing $9.2 mil­lion to ex­e­cute To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val, the two-day event flopped, leav­ing the THA with a loss of $706,317.58.

This was re­vealed at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the THA yes­ter­day.

Read­ing from a doc­u­ment he re­ceived from the THA, JSC mem­ber Lau­rence His­lop re­vealed to his oth­er col­leagues that the is­land’s Car­ni­val cost $9,207,183. The THA mean­while spent $8,368,153, cor­po­rate spon­sors con­tributed $830,000 and $9,030 worth of tick­ets were sold, re­sult­ing in a loss of $706,317.58.

Fol­low­ing the Car­ni­val last Oc­to­ber, THA Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion Tashia Bur­ris had point­ed out that the ini­tial bud­get for the in­au­gur­al Car­ni­val was $17.5 mil­lion. How­ev­er, she said what they ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ed to spend, af­ter the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion and To­ba­go Tourism Agency Lim­it­ed (TTAL) tab­u­lat­ed ex­pens­es, would be in the re­gion of $12 to $13 mil­lion, which meant the As­sem­bly was ex­pect­ed to save $4 mil­lion.

At yes­ter­day’s JSC, His­lop ques­tioned Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my em­ploy­ees on whether it made sense to host Car­ni­val again in the next four months, con­sid­er­ing the THA did not break even.

Chief tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor Anselm Richards de­fend­ed the event, say­ing it was not meant to make a prof­it but to en­cour­age tourists lo­cal­ly and abroad to vis­it To­ba­go.

“The To­ba­go Car­ni­val was not con­cep­tu­alised as a prof­it-mak­ing event from the per­spec­tive of the THA but rather a ve­hi­cle to bring hu­man traf­fic in­to the is­land, if you un­der­stand the na­ture of the To­ba­go econ­o­my. You need hu­man traf­fic to gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land,” Richards told the JSC mem­bers.

He said a study of the event was con­duct­ed by the TTAL re­search de­part­ment, but it had not yet been peer re­viewed.

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence, which made a re­turn on April 20 af­ter a two-year hia­tus due to COVID-19, al­so suf­fered a loss of $6.4 mil­lion. The event cost $11.9 mil­lion to put on.

Ac­cord­ing to the break­down pro­vid­ed by His­lop to the JSC pan­el, the in­come for the event was $5,516,385, the THA pro­vid­ed a sub­ven­tion of $3.1 mil­lion, Carib Brew­ery con­tributed $330,000 in cor­po­rate do­na­tions, tick­et sales amount­ed to $2.4 mil­lion, and ac­count re­ceiv­ables were $37,000.

“The to­tal ex­pen­di­ture was in the vicin­i­ty of about $11.9 mil­lion. And so there again, based on sub­mis­sions from the di­vi­sion, we have a deficit of $6,402,786,” His­lop re­vealed.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue of both the Car­ni­val and Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence record­ing loss­es dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view last evening, Sec­re­tary Bur­ris said it was nev­er an is­sue of the THA seek­ing to make a prof­it off the events, but rather for busi­ness­es in the tourism sec­tor, in­clud­ing ho­tels, restau­rants, trav­el agen­cies and ven­dors, to ben­e­fit.

“The Car­ni­val was de­signed to be an eco­nom­ic dri­ver, so the pur­pose of hav­ing the event is to get peo­ple in­to To­ba­go to be able to mar­ket the des­ti­na­tion, to have a new event on our cal­en­dar that could at­tract cer­tain num­bers of per­sons in­to the space dur­ing a time that is a tra­di­tion­al low sea­son. So, we knew that in the first year, there would be some sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment that we would have to make,” Bur­ris said.

She al­so re­mind­ed that the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence nev­er made a prof­it and said it will no longer be fund­ed sole­ly by the THA go­ing for­ward.

“We de­cid­ed to make this the last year in terms of its cur­rent in­car­na­tion, be­cause we feel that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has to get out of the busi­ness of be­ing event pro­mot­ers and we ac­tu­al­ly want the pri­vate sec­tor to get more in­volved in dri­ving the events tourism in­dus­try,” she said.

Di­ver­si­fy­ing econ­o­my

Mean­while, Richards al­so told the JSC that the THA is work­ing on at­tract­ing for­eign in­vestors who are still lean­ing to­wards tourism, as they strug­gle to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. He said man­u­fac­tur­ing and food pro­duc­tion are key to their plans.

“We are look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at the Stud­ley Park Quar­ry. There is an op­por­tu­ni­ty there for us to do val­ue added prod­ucts like sand­pa­per, stone piles and all of that,” he said.

“We have an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny in the name of Berrycove that has made a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment to pro­duce straw­ber­ries in To­ba­go. That project is far ad­vanced and I think in the com­ing months we will be able to ship straw­ber­ries to Trinidad and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.”

Berrycove has a com­mer­cial­ly scaled cli­mate-smart hy­dro­pon­ic green­house farm lo­cat­ed on Cove Es­tate in To­ba­go.

Sev­er­al key in­di­vid­u­als from the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my, as well as the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion, were ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s JSC.

Those of­fi­cials who were there, were, there­fore, un­pre­pared to an­swer cru­cial ques­tions. This did not go down well with the JSC, who chas­tised the team present and in­di­cat­ed that they would have to reap­pear on Ju­ly 5, when it is hoped they will be bet­ter pre­pared to an­swer all the ques­tions the JSC mem­bers had for them yes­ter­day.