(Trinidad Express)  Prime Minister Patrick Manning called the media to a meeting on Sunday night at the newly- commissioned National Academy for the Performing Arts, to announce that the 15,000-capacity Queen’s Park Savannah Carnival Centre is the next project on the government’s development agenda. Mr Manning emphasised that his announcement was aimed at silencing “detractors.”

He was referring to fete and concert promoters, who were shocked by his recent call for them to build their own venues, in the wake of the Sports Ministry’s ban on using its facilities for cultural events. Mr Manning pointed out that the recently-completed National Academy for the Performing Arts, along with the projected Carnival Centre, were both only “a part of development in T&T.”

Although the Carnival Centre project had been put on hold early this year, because of the global economic downturn, Mr Manning gave no indication when it would be resumed. Responding to criticism that the hotel which forms part of the National Academy for the Performing Arts complex did not appear in blueprints, Mr Manning insisted that the hotel had, in fact, been part of “the integral design” since inception.