Lottery sales in China rose 24 percent in February to billion according to the Ministry of Finance. This is a 36 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
March figures are likely to be dramatically different because the Beijing government on March 1 ordered all provincial lottery sales suspended because of the suspicion that some lottery agents were not giving complete sales reports.
In a related development the supplier of lottery technology to Hong Kong, China LotSynergy Holdings last year saw its sales increase by more than 33 percent to $132.8 million as China set new lottery sales records. The company claims to be the exclusive provider of video lottery terminals to the Welfare Lottery.
In a separate but related development, the lottery players in the city-state of Singapore honored the founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died last week by purchasing thousands of tickets with numbers that were associated with Lee. These included tickets with the exact time of his death, his birth date and the license plate number of the hearse that carried the body to the March 29 state funeral. Since these numbers were limited, betters were left with looking for alternate combinations from or purchasing from unauthorized lottery operators.
