Opposition leader misleads nation on lotto fund

Oct 22, 2016 News

Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo

“They are still to transfer the Lotto Fund (to the treasury)…They have all these huge sums of money that they can use to do much more; but they are keeping it.” So said Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo at his most recent press conference held at Freedom House, on Thursday.
This press conference was aired live on People’s Progressive Party/Civic radio station which he gave to the party days before he left administrative office.
Jagdeo’s remark about the lotto fund came as he sought to make a point to the effect that the coalition government is holding out when there is much more that it can be doing for the nation’s wellbeing.
Jagdeo said that the APNU+AFC government is only crying out about the lack of money in the treasury when it has “all this money lying around in these accounts.”
Jagdeo said that this is yet another campaign promise that the government has reneged on. However, once again the former President has been proven a liar.
But even the Auditor General has proven Jagdeo wrong. Auditor General, Deodat Sharma reported that 89 bank accounts were closed in 2015 and their balances amounting to over $2B were transferred into the Consolidated Fund.
This proves that the government has indeed closed accounts that Jagdeo himself insisted on keeping during his presidential tenure, the report suggested.
The Auditor General report also spoke specifically about the Lotto Fund. Sharma said, “Over the years the Lotteries Commission received proceeds from the National Lottery which were used to make payments approved by Cabinet. These proceeds were retained in a bank account and no amounts were paid over to the Consolidated Fund.”
In 2015, the Ministry budgeted for Lottery Receipts of $1billion under the category of Miscellaneous Revenue. Amounts totalling $1.069 billion were transferred from the bank account to the Consolidated Fund.”
Last year, Raphael Trotman, during a post-Cabinet briefing, told the media that a decision was made to transfer the Lotto Fund into the Consolidated Fund.
In 1995, the Government of Guyana and the Canadian Bank Note (CBN) entered into an agreement for the latter to conduct a national lottery. CBN agreed to pay a licensee fee to the Government of 24 per cent of the gross revenue while the Government undertook not to permit another lottery of similar scope during the life of the agreement.

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