When one says Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Lotto, Sweepstakes, and other digit games automatically come to mind.
While Lotto and other digit games are still the undisputed highest-earning product of PCSO with an overall revenue of P2,591,971,830 for the month of July, Small Town Lottery is becoming a force to be reckoned with its current sales of P1,955,334,092, an increase of 57.94 percent compared to the same period last year.
Officials revealed in a press statement there was some Lotto vs STL competition happening in Mindanao and Visayas, but gave assurances to the gaming public they would balance this and they were on top of it.
At present, STL is earning almost P2 billion a month.
From 18 original STL operators, the agency has now 82.
In 2016, STL used to earn P4.7 billion a year vis-à-vis during President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration where it earned P15.7 billion by the end of 2017.
From January to July this year, STL has earned P13,616,456,257.28 billion, an increase of 83.63 percent compared to the same period last year.
The PCSO Charter, or RA 1169, particularly on revenue allocation, provides that the revenue of the PCSO shall be allocated to 55 percent for prize fund (payment of prizes), 30 percent for charity fund (various charity programs and service) and 15 percent as operating fund (maintenance and operating expenses).
“Thirty percent of Charity Fund goes to the 1,200 patients being served by PCSO every single day. This is including the patients coming from 63 PCSO branches and 62 partner-hospitals with ASAP [At-Source-Ang-Processing] desks nationwide,” officials said.
For the first semester of this year, officials said the agency had spent P20 million a day for hospitalization, request for medicines, transplant/implant, chemotherapy, and dialysis, serving 400,000 patients.
“We still have five more months. We are confident that we will hit our target of P55 to 60 billion overall revenues, as long as the law enforcement will help us fight against illegal numbers game,” officials said.
STL has created P320,000 jobs for kabos, kubradores, and rebisadores—those people who cannot pass the nitty-gritties of job fairs because of old age, disability, and lack of education.
“This is a huge opportunity for us to save them from bad vices and from being exploited by criminal elements,” officials said.