ILOILO – Small Town Lottery (STL) will return to this province beginning July 1.
It will have two draws daily but the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) is allowing only two winning number combinations instead of the usual three, according to Iloilo City councilor Romel Duron, spokesperson of Seven (7) Aces, the group granted a franchise to operate STL in Iloilo province.
“Hopefully, daw mas maayo ini ‘ya kompara sang una kay nakita naton nga manubo subong ang GMRR or guaranteed monthly revenue receipt,” said Duron.
Previously, applicant agent corporations found it hard to secure an STL franchise because of the very high GMRR – around P111 million a month.
This time, the GMRR is a “reasonable” P45 million a month, said Duron. “Confident kita nga masige-sige ang operation sang STL diri sa province of Iloilo.”
The main office of this new authorized agent corporation (AAC) will be in Pavia town. According to Duron, Seven Aces is a close family corporation owned by the Medina and Lupeña families.
Iloilo province’s previous AAC was Red Subay Gaming Corp. Duron was its legal counsel. It stopped operating due to the steep conditions that PCSO imposed – deposit to the PCSO a cash bond equivalent to three months of the agency’s share in the GMRR on top of their existing cash bonds.
Red Subay, said Duron, was specifically required the following:
* deposit a cash bond of P111 million (equivalent to one month of its presumptive monthly retail receipt or PMRR), and
* deposit P333 million GMRR (equivalent to three months PMRR)
On top of those two deposits, Duron said, Red Subay must also sign an agreement with PCSO to pay its P390-million PMRR shortfall covering nine months.
PMRR is the amount determined by PCSO as the presumed minimum monthly sales of an ACC. It should be remitted to PCSO every month.
PCSO imposed the PMRR to ensure that STL operators would not be able to cheat the government on their sales and revenues.
Under Article IX, Section 36 of PCSO’s 2016 revised implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for STL, it is the PCSO’s Board of Directors that determines the PMRR of a particular area. It must take into consideration, among others, the area’s location, population, national and local economic and growth targets and activities.
To determine an ACC’s PMRR, said Duron, 30 percent of the total registered voters in a province/city is multiplied with P2.50 and the result is again multiplied with three (draws).
On July 27, 2019, President Rodrigo Duterte suspended STL citing alleged massive corruption in the PCSO. Nearly a month after, on Aug. 22, PCSO general manager Royina Garma announced that the President had lifted the suspension order on STL.
All AACs that were compliant with the conditions of their STL agency agreement and have been remitting their guaranteed minimum monthly retail receipts were allowed to resume their operation.
Another condition that PCSO set was this: Upon failure to timely and fully remit their GMMRR during the duration of operations, the AACs’ cash bond equivalent to three months of the PCSO’s share in the GMRR shall be automatically forfeited in favor of PCSO, without prejudice to the other remedies that may be exercised by the government./PN
