GOB privatizes public lottery
Posted: 10/11/2009 - 10:05 AM
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Following several months of rumored privatization, the Government formally announced today that it has awarded a 10-year contract to Brads Gaming Company Ltd.—owned by a Chinese proprietor of Brads store at Farmers Market, Belize City, where some ruling party officials are known to “lime”—to take over the management of the public lottery.
“Presently, collections from the sale of lottery books and license approvals net only about $0.9 million annually,” the Government said via press release. “Therefore, the key conditions that Government decided to include in the outsourcing of the lotteries’ management were the guaranteed collection of $2 million, annually, by way of a license fee; a profit sharing arrangement and business tax that the private company would be required to pay.”
GOB claims that “to ensure transparency in the selection process,” Cabinet had appointed a tender selection panel, chaired by Auditor General Edmund Zuniga, to recommend a company that would be able to administer the lottery for the next 10-year period, in the first instance, starting April 1, 2010. The arrangement should be assessed every two years.
Privatizing the public lottery was a Cabinet decision made early 2009, said the government release. Cabinet made the final decision at last Tuesday’s session, even though the briefing from that meeting did not breathe a word of the decision.
Other members of the selection panel were Senator Godwin Hulse, a representative of the Ministry of Finance, and three members from the Lotteries Committee and Gaming Control Board.
“The panel concluded that Brads Gaming Company Ltd. was the best equipped to administer the lotteries programs on behalf of the Government,” GOB’s release said.
The release added that, “...in the first year of private management of the lotteries programs, nothing essentially will change as far as the purchase of lottery tickets is concerned. At the end of the first year, the transition to electronic sales will commence.”
The revenues will go to the Official Charities Fund (OCF) for social and poverty alleviation programs, GOB claims, without detailing what Brads Gaming Company Ltd. will get for managing the public lotteries.
Neither did the government release disclose the value of the 10-year contract, or who owns and controls the company that has been picked to take over the public lotteries.
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