Nearly 500 people attended a workshop sponsored by TaipeiBank (台北銀行) yesterday in Kinmen for the purpose of recruiting lottery sale agents.
The participants, who arrived in wheelchairs, on crutches and in Mercedes Benz and Cadillac limousines, scrambled to win the agent rights for the TaipeiBank lottery, which has been a cash cow for the island since its introduction more than one year ago.
TaipeiBank allows only physically challenged or low-income individuals to be its lottery agents.
At present, there are 13 lottery agents on Kinmen, but TaipeiBank is planning to increase the number by 18 to meet the sales demand, which the TaipeiBank authorities believe to be brisk partly because of strong buying from China.
According to recent reports, the opening of the "small three links" has not only benefited traders between Kinmen and the China, it has also offered the hope of getting rich quick to lottery players from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
A small lottery sales booth in Kinmen was confirmed by Taipei-Bank recently to be the third-largest of all the bank's sales agents in terms of sales volume.
According to TaipeiBank tallies, sales of lottery tickets issued by government-run bank totaled about NT$79 billion (US$2.29 billion) last year. Of that total, 8 percent, or some NT$6.32 billion (US$183 million), was paid as commission to lottery sales booths, including those in Kinmen and Penghu.
On average, each of the 4,900 sales booths around the country made NT$1.26 million (US$36,522) in sales commission last year.
However, the difference in the amount of business at such booths last year was large, with the top 20 outlets in terms of sales commission each making more than NT$5 million (US$144,928).
Surprised by the huge sales posted by the small Kinmen outlet, TaipeiBank officials recently traveled there to investigate.
They discovered that local Kinmen residents are not the outlet's only customers, with a large portion of sales being made to lottery players from Fujian Province who sail across the Strait to buy tickets.
According to a Kinmen lottery salesman, the Chinese are keen buyers because they think the Taiwan lottery is fairer than its Chinese counterparts and has larger jackpots, often as high as NT$100 million.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
RSS