Not enough money allocated for the running of Carnival 2024. This is the view of Winston Gypsy Peters, Chairman of the National Carnival Commission (NCC).
The NCC has been allocated $141 million to manage this year’s Carnival. This figure represents six million less than what the NCC received in 2023. NCC’s chairman Winston “Gypsy” Peters disclosed the commission’s 2024 subventions which he described as “inadequate” and “worrying” in an interview with the Sunday Guardian on Wednesday.
Gypsy said every year the Government has been slashing NCC’s funding, while he says that T&T generated $1.3 billion in revenue from Carnival events.
Peters felt $200 million would have been enough to host a successful 2023 Carnival, but they got $147 million last year, which is a shortfall of $53 million. He said, the reduced amount will not result in a smaller carnival but payments to suppliers will be affected : “It would not translate into a smaller Carnival, it would translate into us owing more people after Carnival.” NCC still owed contractors for services supplied in the 2022 and 2023 Carnivals.
Peters said if that’s what the government can afford to give the NCC, they have to accept that allocation: “If that is what the Government could afford, that is what we will have to work with. That is why we can’t even entertain the 2024 Soca Monarch competition and a couple of other things that we want to do. We want to do it, but we can’t. The money is not there.”
One of the casualties of less money is the non staging of the International Soca Monarch competition. He said: “We cannot leave the soca artiste in this country out in the rain because they are essential to our Carnival, and they are essential to the year-round cultural activities that take place around the world.”
Soca Monarch, which has been a fixture among Carnival events and competitions for the past three decades, will not be held this year.
Peters promised to do all within his power later this year to ensure Soca Monarch is held in 2025.