Jackpot Prizes: Hiding winner’s identity

The net profit has been paid to the State budget

Speaking at the conference, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Dam, Deputy General Director of Vietnam lottery company (Vietlott) said, by November 20th, the ticket sales revenue (including taxes) of Vietlott was 734.4 billion VND. In which, the Mega 6/45 prize reached 730.5 billion VND (accounted for 99.5%); Max 4D products reached nearly 4 billion (accounted for 0.5%).

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Dam also said that, according to the current regulations on corporate taxes, Vietlott has spent 55% of the ticket sales revenue to pay the prize, then spent another 15% on excise taxes, 10% on VAT, and after deducting business expenses including the payments to partner companies, Vietlott continued to pay 20% corporate income tax. The company would pay the last portion of the profits into the budget as prescribed.

After 4 months of operation, Vietlott has been already paid 85.5 billion VND into the State's budget. Currently, Vietlott is implementing the declaration at the head office, allocating the revenue to the local budget in proportion to the actual revenue generated in each province, city and doing the paper work to pay to local budgets according to the law.

The winners are real

In terms of Mega 6/45 prize, by November 20, 2016, there had been 4 Jackpot prize winners with the total amount of 284 billion VND. The amount paid was 156.8 billion VND. By November 22nd, Vietlott has given 3 Jackpot prizes. According to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Dam, at the Jackpot prize ceremonies, Vietlott has invited the related parties to witness, including the representatives of the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Finance, Deloitte Vietnam, the executive board of Vietlott, Berjaya Corporation, the agents that issued the winning tickets, the winners with their relatives and some other witnesses. Witnessing the ceremonies, representatives of Security of Finance and Investments Department (the Ministry of Public Security) said that the compensation process of Vietlott was completely public and transparent, ensured the supervision of the parties involved.

However, some opinions were that the individuals who received the prizes of Vietlott always wear masks when going to the ceremonies and believed this could be a trick of the company to lure people into buying tickets. On this issue, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Dam affirmed: "Paying the prizes to the winners is absolutely real in three aspects: Firstly, the winning tickets are real; secondly, the winners are real; thirdly, the prizes are real. Currently, we are saving the full record of the payments of prizes with the participation of the related parties, which is ready to be public when it is needed."

Also, according to Mr. Dam, currently, publicizing the winner's identity is a controversial issue in many countries, not only in Vietnam. The United States allows the winners to keep their personal information confidential. For example, with the prize of $US 1.6 billion, the US only announced the identities of two people, and one winner was anonymous. Keeping the player's identity private is consistent with practices in the world.

Mr. Dam shared that, publicizing the identity of the winners is good for business, but the organization should also be responsible for the security of winners, because the information security also means safety for them.

On the other hand, in the past, some opinions reflect that there are some violations of business, such as wrong area or wrong mode of release. Mr. Nguyen Hoang Duong, Deputy Director of Banking and Financial Institutions Deparment (the Ministry of Finance) said that, as soon as such information was available, the Government requested Vietlott check mistakes and find causes to settle the situation promptly.

"We found that computerized lottery products have received the major interests of people because of its novelty, especially in the regions that Vietlott does not have any agents. So there are some individuals or organizations that have purchased the tickets at the agents of Vietlott and brought them to other regions to resale with the price difference being from 1000 to 2000 VND per ticket. However, I assert that this is purely spontaneous act, Vietlott does not have any master plan to deploy such retail operation and does not sign any contract with any individual or organization outside the agent system of Vietlott. Therefore, Vietlott has not violated the provisions of the Government on the lottery business". Mr. Duong said.

Vietlott is implementing some drastic actions, in which, Vietlott has requested agents to strictly implementi to sell tickets via the terminal equipment in the region. If any violation is detected, Vietlott will immediately terminate the agents.

The representative of the Ministry of Finance also advised buyers should buy tickets at the official ticket sales point to avoid some individuals pretending to be Vietlott to perform some act against the regulations. He also recommended the relevant authorities at the localities that have Vietlott agents to coordinate to handle the violations, ensure lottery business in general and computerized lottery business in particular follows the regulations. By the end of 2016, the Ministry of Finance will evaluate the situation after more than 5 months of deployment and consider expanding the region of Vietlott to other provinces to prevent the sale of tickets to the wrong area.

Computerized lottery does not compete with traditional lottery

The modernization of traditional lottery activity is the policy of the Party and the Government. The advent of computerized lottery is new entertainment attracting many interests of society. Mr. Nguyen Hoang Duong said, the traditional lottery company has strongly developed for a long time and been put into place. According to statistics, the traditional lottery region's most powerful development is the Southern market (accounting for nearly 90% of the revenue of the country). So this is where Vietlott chose first to develop.

Mr. Duong also said that the market penetration of Vietlott does not affect the traditional lottery market, because the consumption of Vietlott only accounts for 0.28% of the entire market turnover. The expected revenue of the lottery market in 2016 is about 75,000 billion VND and the revenue of computerized lottery is only about 1.3% of the market if it develops well. This suggests that the establishment of Vietlott does not affect the market share of the lottery.

"The initial results have a positive impact. During the next period, if the computerized lottery business develops to be more attractive, more transparent and more consistent with the taste of the market, it shall help prevent illegal gambling activities", Mr. Tuan said.