Counting Carnival costs

WHILE THERE was a lot the National Carnival Commission (NCC) and the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) could not agree on in relation to the relatively new Tobago carnival experience last month, there are matters closer to home that the NCC is yet to settle on when it comes to the festival it stages every year in Trinidad.

That much was clear from the appearance of several high-ranking NCC officials before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday.

How much does Carnival cost? According to Winston “Gypsy” Peters, the NCC chairman, the actual festival costs $150 million. But according to Nigel Williams, the NCC CEO, the annual expenditure of the commission is $186 million. Given that the NCC needs to be in place year-round, it is a distinction without a difference.

If NCC officials vary on how they count costs, they also diverge on counting revenue. Mr Williams said the festival earns $25 million in gate receipts. At another point, he suggested overall revenue, which he did not disaggregate, is about $400 million. At yet another point he said revenue could well be $1 billion.

The NCC is a permanent fixture of our cultural landscape. It is a statutory body and it is meant to have a specialist focus: making Carnival a viable national, cultural and commercial enterprise. Considering this, the throwing around of numbers willy nilly at Wednesday’s hearing was disturbing. Culture cannot be measured in dollars, but there are tried and tested ways to ascertain its reach and value.

In sharp contrast to all the bluster of officials at the hearing and the many plans they shared was the lack of robust accountability of both financial aspects of the organisation – direct and indirect – as well as the inner functioning of this organisation. Missing was a sense of the NCC getting any better.

Admittedly, the NCC does not have an easy job. If there is anything that citizens of this country have opinions about it is Carnival. It can be difficult for organisations to please everyone, including the many interest groups and stakeholders. For a long time, gate receipts have been going down. The sector also endured two difficult years during the covid19 pandemic when no revenue was made (the infamous Taste of Carnival of 2022 – for which Mr Peters also had grand plans – is, mercifully, a memory). But the years in which the festival was in abeyance were not well spent.

The choice of theme for Carnival 2024, Carnival... Come Back Home, might have been a fitting theme for Carnival 2023 when Nailah Blackman’s hit song reigned. Instead, the choice underlines an unfortunate focus on already in-built, diaspora revellers and not new visitors. It also evokes a sense of repetition ill-suited to the greatest show on Earth.