Lottery ticket production to increase Kerala revenues

The state government will increase the production of lottery tickets in order to obtain additional revenue.

India.- The state government of Kerala reported that US$1.5 billion are expected to be generated in lottery revenue for the 2017-2018 fiscal year. The increase in revenues comes after a decision to increase the number of lottery tickets printed every day.

The government is counting on a positive outcome as the financial year ended March 31, 2017 reported an all time-revenue high of state lottery tickets sale. Kerala State Lotteries Department (KSLD) has decided to print an additional 400k tickets every day starting November 1 and increasing the number of printed tickets to 9.6 million a day.

K D Appachan, Deputy Director (Sales), KSLD, commented: “It has been only a month since the Lotteries Department took up the number to 92 lakh tickets (9.2 million) from around 85  lakh tickets (8.5 million) it was printing over the past many months. This comes after a rough patch the sales went through immediately after demonetisation when the sales fell to an unprecedented low of 60 lakh tickets (6 million).” He also added that during the first six months of the current fiscal year they managed to cross last year’s total revenue, and that they’re confident that they will reach the US$1.5 billion figure by March 31, 2018.

Venkatesapathy S, Director, KSLD, said that they were moving in the right direction and that they decided to increase the printing of tickets as part of their sales strategy. Moreover, Tomin J Thachankary, Managing Director, KBPS, said: “From November 1 we will start printing these additional tickets. At present we have only one machine for printing the entire lot but within months, we will purchase a modern machine with advanced technology for this job.”