PCSO rolls back lotto ticket price

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office will roll back the price of its lotto ticket from P24 to P20 once the PCSO resumes operations.

Royina Garma, PCSO general manager and vice chairperson of the board of directors, said yesterday the P20 ticket price includes the value added tax (VAT).

In 2018, the PCSO increased its lotto ticket price from P20 to P24 to comply with the passage and implementation of the TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act) law, which imposed VAT on lotto.

The PCSO is also looking at revising its regulations in giving out the second consolation prizes for the lotto games.

Garma said the plan was for the second consolation prize or those who correctly guessed five of the six-digit winning combination to not be split by the number of prize winners. Instead, the prize amount will be given in full to each of the second prize winners.

The revision is seen to attract more lotto players to place bets or buy tickets and jack up the PCSO’s revenue collection which has been stopped due to the government’s imposition of enhanced community quarantine in Luzon.

“Except for jackpot prize, the other consolation prizes, kung ano po ‘yung amount sa consolation prize ‘yun din po ang matatanggap ng ating mananaya (whatever amount of the consolation prize, that’s what bettors will also get),” said Garma.

Recently, the PCSO had also lowered the fees for a lotto and keno lotto agent under the “3-in-1 promo” program.

Before, to become a lotto agent, one would have to pay P2,500 application fee, and to become a Keno agent, an applicant would have to pay another P2,500.

But with lowered fees, for only P2,500 one can already be a lotto, keno and sweepstakes agent.

PCSO also decreased the renewal fee, Garma said.

She said aside from increasing the number of lotto agents or outlet operators, the program would provide livelihood to those rendered jobless by ECQ and the economic disruption brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the absence of revenues since March, the PCSO had been aggressive in contributing to the government’s medical and humanitarian responses to the pandemic.

The PCSO has released more than P3 billion for the government’s COVID response with their advance release of some P2.2 billion in dividends to the Department of Finance; P420 million to Philippine Health Insurance Corp. for the costs of hospitalization of COVID patients; and additional P447 million as financial assistance to 82 government hospitals across the country.

On top of the lump sum release of more than P3 billion to help fund COVID-19 related medical and humanitarian activities, the PCSO is also continuing its Medical Assistance Program (MAP) where it releases financial medical assistance to indigents for their hospital confinement bills, chemotherapy, dialysis and post-transplant medicines.

The PCSO said it gave over P191 million MAP assistance in May which benefitted 20,684 indigents.