Government to scrap private lotto

The Government is taking steps to stop the operations of the banker-to-banker and other private lotto operators.

Consequently, the Ministry of Finance has sent a memorandum informing and justifying the need to repeal the amendment to the Lotteries Act. The repeal of the amendment will empower the government to throw the private lotto operators out of business.

Miss Grace Coleman, Deputy Minister of Finance disclosed that the Finance Ministry was pursuing that action because the operators were not playing the game according to the rule, thereby denying the state of its much needed revenue.

She explained that investigations by the Ministry revealed that out of the 60 lotto operators, 24 did not have tax files. "This means that these 24 operators do not pay anything on the Value Added Tax (VAT) at all. One can imagine the amount of revenue (the) government is losing. During the investigations, it came up that one operator owes the state 3 billion cedis through the defaultment in VAT payment," she added.