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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS