National Lottery Bids Boost Gambling Authority Coffers
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday May 20, 2019 14:33
According to the Authority, bidders paid P1 million non-refundable application fee in a quest to win a 10-year National Lottery licence and P10, 000 for the document. The successful applicant will also be expected to pay an annual licence fee of P1 million.
A Lottery is a gambling means of raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving prizes to the holders of numbers drawn at random.
The latest General Auditors report indicated that the collections from the national lottery applications have boosted the Authority’s sources of income.
The Authority, which was incepted three years ago, is funded by Government grants. In the year under review the grant was P28.55 million, representing 77% of total income, compared to P28.17 million in the previous year.
“Other notable sources of income for the Authority were national lottery fees of P5.17 million, casino entrance fees of P1.47 million, annual fees of P900 000, income from gambling machines of P422 250 and transfer fees of P200 000,” read the report.
Last year the Authority was stopped from issuing any licence to any party interested in operating the national lottery by the courts. This was purely because the Authority already had a pending arbitration case with one of the parties that was interested in running the national lottery when the GA floated a tender in 2017.
The party, Infinitum Lottery Company was left aggrieved when the authority refused to accept their additional documents despite submitting the main document before the closing time that was set for October 26, 2017 at the cut-off time of 10am.
However, earlier this year the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry said they were forced to engage a foreign company as adjudicators on the lottery licensing since no local company has the requisite expertise.
The company is expected to act as transaction advisors who will evaluate the National Lottery Bids. The company was appointed on a single sourcing method and was approved by the board. This is in line with section 3.2.7 of the Gambling Authority Procurement Policy on single or direct appointment.
In the year under review, the Authority recorded a profit of P3.11 million, compared to a restated profit of P1.74 million in the previous year. Income increased by 36% from P27.14 million in the previous year to P36.96 million in the year under review, while on the other hand expenditure increased by 33% from P23.40 million in the previous year to P33.85 million in the year under review.