Businesses Urged to Support Music Festival

(ZIZ)– Minister of Tourism, Hon. Richard Skerritt is calling on local businesses to throw their support behind the federation’s premiere music festival.

Speaking on Wednesday during a partnership and media breakfast, Minister Skerritt said for a number of years, the St. Kitts Music Festival was running into financial problems.

“One of the ongoing challenges of the festival is that in order to attract local, regional and international patrons, it is necessary to engage popular artistes who attract media and ticket sales,” he said. “When you couple that with the very expensive cost of airline travel these days, the need for room accommodation and production, we would run into a high production cost for the festival.”

The minister went on to say that the future success of the festival depends heavily on private sector support.

“I therefore take this opportunity to appeal to the business community…to understand that the music festival cannot survive without your help. The festival raises approximately EC$4 million each year, half of which comes from the government and less than 25 percent of which comes from the private sector. The other 30 percent or so comes from ticket sales. That level of revenue has been sustained for the last 6 or 7 years. In fact, government is spending less money today on the festival than it did ten years ago.”

Telecommunications company, LIME, presented a cheque valued at EC$200,000 to the St. Kitts Music Festival on Wednesday while Carib Brewery donated another EC$65,000.