Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, January 31st Question: What did more than 400 billion lottery money do last year? — — Read through the national lottery ledger
Han Jie, Hu Lu, Fan Chenwei
According to the latest official data, China’s lottery sales revenue crossed the 400 billion mark for the first time in 2017. Judging from the income scale, the money spent by lottery players in China in a year is close to the financial income of the whole city. Where does the lottery money go? How to manage and make good use of this fund? The reporter interviewed the authoritative department to explain the national lottery ledger in detail.
Lottery ledger: half goes to the prize pool and about 30% goes to the public welfare fund.
Do you know that lottery players spend two yuan on lottery tickets, and what percentage of them will be put into the prize pool? What did the rest of the money do?
The relevant person in charge of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Finance introduced that at present, China’s lottery sales revenue mainly comes from two major operating systems: welfare lottery and sports lottery. More than 55% of lottery sales enter the prize pool to pay lottery winners’ prize money. About half of the remaining income, after deducting the lottery issuance fee, is used for the lottery public welfare fund.
"In 1987, the original intention of establishing welfare lottery in China was to make up for the lack of national financial allocation for welfare undertakings. At present, about 28% of Fucai’s sales, together with the overdue bonuses, are included in the lottery public welfare fund. " Feng Yaping, director of the China Welfare Lottery Issuance Management Center of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said that by the end of 2017, China had issued a total of 1,795 billion yuan of welfare lottery tickets and raised more than 537 billion yuan of public welfare funds.
According to the data of 2017, China sold a total of 426.669 billion yuan of lottery tickets, including 216.977 billion yuan for welfare lottery institutions and 209.692 billion yuan for sports lottery institutions. The two institutions raised a total of 114.326 billion yuan in lottery public welfare funds.
"The lottery, in a sense, advocates that everyone take out extra scattered funds to fulfill the public welfare wishes of ordinary people." Zhang Chi, director of the Sports Lottery Management Center of the State Sports General Administration, said that in the 23 years since 1994, from raising development funds for sports to becoming a national public welfare lottery, sports lottery has achieved a total sales income of 1.4 trillion yuan, raising a total of about 382 billion yuan for public welfare funds.
Public welfare fund account book: half goes to the central government, and 30% goes to the pension.
A small lottery ticket seems to only bear the "grand prize dream" of the general public and add some fun to the plain life, but in fact, it is an important channel to raise special financial funds for the development of social welfare undertakings.
In 2017, of China’s 426.669 billion yuan lottery sales revenue, over 100 billion yuan was included in the lottery public welfare fund.
Many lottery players are concerned about how to distribute the lottery public welfare fund. Where did it all go?
"The lottery public welfare fund has become an important financial support for the development of social welfare undertakings in China." The relevant person in charge of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Finance introduced that in the past 30 years, with the steady expansion of the lottery public welfare fund, the distribution policy of the public welfare fund has also been adjusted and improved from the initial "departmental distribution" policy to the current "proportional distribution" policy.
According to the current lottery public welfare fund allocation policy: the central and local governments allocate the lottery public welfare fund according to the ratio of 50: 50, and the centralized part of the lottery is allocated to social security funds, special public welfare funds, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the State Sports General Administration according to the ratio of 60%, 30%, 5% and 5%. The local retained part shall be determined by the provincial financial department in consultation with the civil affairs and sports departments at the same level.
Feng Yaping said that in the past 30 years, Fucai Public Welfare Fund has funded more than 300,000 public welfare projects, covering social welfare, social welfare, social security, education and health, sports, culture, disaster relief, relief, poverty alleviation, legal aid and many other fields, with more than 571 million direct and indirect beneficiaries, while directly creating more than 400,000 jobs, benefiting the disabled, laid-off workers and other difficult people, and creating hundreds of taxes for the country.
It is noteworthy that 60% of the lottery public welfare funds in the central government are allocated to social security funds, which means that 30% of the lottery public welfare funds in the country are directly invested in the people’s pension pool. To put it another way, for every two yuan spent on a lottery ticket, about twenty cents is invested in the people’s pension.
At the end of 2017, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Civil Affairs also jointly issued a document requesting that the total budget of the lottery public welfare fund for elderly welfare projects should not be less than 50% of the total lottery public welfare fund, which shows that the lottery public welfare fund expenditure attaches importance to solving the problem of old-age care.
At the same time, as the lifeline of sports and the booster of social welfare, sports lottery has become an important part of accelerating the construction of a healthy China and a sports power, and has also promoted the successful hosting of major international and domestic sports events such as the Olympic Games, the Asian Games and the National Games.
"Nowadays, almost all the funds for the national fitness in China come from the sports lottery public welfare fund." Zhang Chi introduced that the use of sports lottery public welfare funds is mainly in national fitness. With the strong support of the Sports Lottery Public Welfare Fund, farmers’ physical fitness projects have been built all over the country in more than 600,000 administrative villages, and national fitness paths, national fitness activity centers, community multi-functional sports fields and fitness trails have become fitness places around the people.
What many people don’t understand is that besides being used for sports, the sports lottery public welfare fund is also included in the central public welfare fund in proportion with the welfare lottery public welfare fund for social security, education, medical and health care, assistance for the disabled, poverty alleviation, disaster relief, culture and other social welfare undertakings. "Sports lottery and welfare lottery are no longer departmental lottery, but national lottery in the true sense." Zhang Chi said.
Sunshine Lottery: Tightening System Cage and Promoting the Healthy Development of Industry
Lottery funds are taken from the people, how to ensure that they are used by the people? How to plug the loopholes in the lottery public welfare fund and management operation?
From perfecting the system to strengthening supervision, the management and use efficiency of lottery funds has been continuously improved in recent years. According to the relevant person in charge of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Finance, lottery funds have been adjusted from special account management to inclusion in the budget in accordance with government fund management measures, and the announcement system for raising, distributing and using has been continuously improved, initially establishing a standardized, complete, open and transparent budget management system.
At the same time, in the past two years, the state has intensified the audit and rectification of the lottery industry, urged the rectification and improvement of related problems, and investigated and dealt with the relevant responsible personnel.
The most concerned thing is the announcement of the 2014 lottery fund audit published by the National Audit Office in June 2015. The audit involved 18 provinces, 228 provincial and municipal lottery sales organizations and 4,965 lottery public welfare fund-funded projects.
Experts pointed out that an important reason for the frequent exposure of illegal use of lottery funds, extravagance and waste in various places was that lottery funds involved a wide range, funds were scattered, management and use were opaque, and there were many blind spots in supervision.
Zeng Fanrong, an industry expert and founder of Pantone Information, said that managing and using the public welfare fund well is an inevitable requirement for maintaining the public welfare nature of lottery tickets. The key is to create a sunshine lottery ticket, and make the lottery account books, especially the public welfare fund account books, bright and clear, so that the use direction and requirements of each fund are clearer.
In order to strengthen and standardize the management and use of lottery public welfare funds, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has formulated a series of rules and regulations on the management and use of public welfare funds, supervision and information disclosure. In June 2017, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a document to strengthen the management of lottery public welfare fund projects, clearly proposing to announce the use of funds to the public before the end of June each year.
"Implementing the requirements of strictly administering the party in an all-round way is a political guarantee for doing a good job in welfare lottery, which can only be strengthened, not weakened." Feng Yaping said that in the new era, the Welfare Lottery System will continue to promote the building of a clean and honest government and the fight against corruption, sort out the risks of clean government in all aspects of welfare lottery issuance and sales management, and tighten the institutional cage. Zhang Chi believes that safety and integrity are the lifeline of sports lottery work, and it is necessary to integrate the construction of party style and clean government with business work, build a responsible, reliable, healthy and sustainable national public welfare lottery, and take every step of development in a down-to-earth manner.
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