There are just un­der 100 days to go be­fore the 2025 edi­tion of the colour­ful spec­ta­cle of T&T Car­ni­val fills streets and com­pe­ti­tion venues across the coun­try. The count­down to the two-day main event be­gan with last Sat­ur­day’s of­fi­cial launch at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, at which Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters pro­claimed that this year’s event had gen­er­at­ed US$93 mil­lion.

That was a wel­come piece of in­for­ma­tion amid on­go­ing con­cerns about for­eign ex­change. It was al­so a re­minder that T&T Car­ni­val is much more than a cul­tur­al ex­trav­a­gan­za—it is a se­ri­ous in­dus­try that can de­vel­op in­to a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic pow­er­house.

A large por­tion of the for­eign ex­change earned dur­ing Car­ni­val comes from mon­ey spent by vis­i­tors dur­ing the fes­ti­val and, ac­cord­ing to Pe­ters, there has been an up­ward trend in vis­i­tor­ship, with tens of thou­sands of na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als com­ing in­to the coun­try.

The trend has seen more than 33,000 vis­i­tors com­ing here an­nu­al­ly for Car­ni­val be­tween 2010 and 2020, and, fol­low­ing a sharp drop due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions, the num­ber re­cov­ered to 27,000 last year. Those vis­i­tors brought in US$62 mil­lion dur­ing the 2023 Car­ni­val sea­son.

How­ev­er, while the num­ber of vis­i­tors seems to be head­ing in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion, Car­ni­val’s full po­ten­tial as a con­trib­u­tor to T&T’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty is yet to be re­alised. For all the time, en­er­gy and in­vest­ment that goes in­to the an­nu­al fes­ti­val, it is not yet a rev­enue gen­er­a­tor on the scale that the coun­try needs.

The po­ten­tial of T&T Car­ni­val will be seen in the com­ing months in all the ac­tiv­i­ties and events lead­ing up to the spec­ta­cle of cul­ture, cre­ativ­i­ty and spir­it on March 3 and 4, 2025.

Oil and gas rev­enues have been steadi­ly de­clin­ing for years. Un­cer­tain­ty over the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela fur­ther com­pli­cates the sit­u­a­tion with this coun­try’s strug­gling en­er­gy in­dus­try, so more ef­fort needs to be put in­to the de­vel­op­ment of oth­er sec­tors that can con­tribute to eco­nom­ic re­vival.

The Car­ni­val in­dus­try, the most vi­brant sub-sec­tor of T&T tourism, should be much more of a de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ty. It is al­ready a thriv­ing ecosys­tem with the po­ten­tial for much more growth.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that over ten per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is di­rect­ly in­volved in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try—de­sign­ing and mak­ing cos­tumes, pro­vid­ing mu­si­cal and oth­er forms of en­ter­tain­ment, pro­duc­ing events and pro­vid­ing oth­er types of goods and ser­vices. In­di­rect­ly, the in­dus­try cre­ates thou­sands of jobs in a host of an­cil­lary in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty, ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­porta­tion and ad­ver­tis­ing.

The Car­ni­val sea­son brings more vis­i­tors to the coun­try than at any oth­er time of the year, con­sis­tent­ly ac­count­ing for more than 12 per cent of to­tal an­nu­al ar­rivals. Feb­ru­ary, which is usu­al­ly when the fes­ti­val reach­es its cli­max, is the month with the high­est num­ber of ho­tel, pri­vate and guest­house vis­its.

While Car­ni­val’s un­tapped rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing po­ten­tial has been talked about for years and al­ways comes up dur­ing dis­cus­sions about eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, there has not been enough ef­fort to har­ness the fes­ti­val’s un­tapped po­ten­tial. Ef­forts in that di­rec­tion need to be am­pli­fied so that, in ad­di­tion to its suc­cess as a cul­tur­al event that projects this coun­try’s cre­ativ­i­ty to the world, Car­ni­val be­comes a ma­jor dri­ver of the T&T econ­o­my.