In the past five years, the national sports lottery tickets, out of a total sale of 18.3 billion yuan, has generated an earning of six billion yuan for public funds, and it has thus opened a new channel for the development of sports industry in China.

Yuan Weimin, director-general of State Sports Administration, called on February 5 for a composed and careful operation of sports lottery.

Sports lottery business as a strong support for sports industry has been preferentially authorized by the government, therefore, we should make the best use of it, said Yuan. Lottery selling in this year is expected to reach 12 billion yuan, which is much higher than that of last year. Among the cities granted the issuance of sports lottery, Sichuan's GDP ranks the 11th place in the country, however, its lottery earnings run up to the second. The average sales amount per person in Tibet tops the country.

The Ministry of Finance has approved of issuing the soccer lottery to 12 provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Liaoning, Guangdong, Shandong, Sichuan, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Hubei. The experimental operation of Soccer lottery in the 12 provinces and cities should be managed with care and attention and no monkey business should be allowed before it is to be extended to the whole country. In the meantime, the building of a computerized lottery-selling network is called for in order to help boom the development of lottery industry in western regions.

Yuan also stressed the open and transparent management and use of the lottery earnings. As previously reported, in some areas this earning was devoured or taken away for other use, especially in the poverty-stricken areas. This is in violation of the related regulations and must be punished rigidly. All lottery profits should go to the development of China's sports industry.

(People's Daily 02/05/01)