The nation's charity lottery retailers voiced concern at a public hearing yesterday that the coming sports lottery would have a negative impact on their business.
Earlier this month, the government announced that a sports lottery would start as early as next April.
"Lottery retailers estimated that a sports lottery may take 15 percent of their market share," Democratic Progressive Party Legislator William Lai (賴清德) said. "We therefore have to consider if there is a big enough market for both the charity and sports lotteries."
Taipei Fubon Bank's lottery department vice-president Jlong Hsu (
"The markets for the sports lottery and the charity lottery are different," Hsu said.
Studies on similar cases abroad found only 5 percent of overlapping business, he said.
However, Hsu did not convince retailers and lawmakers.
"A larger percentage of sports lottery sales revenue will be allocated to prizes -- how can you be sure that such a factor would not attract charity lottery customers?" Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Yu-ting (
Currently, only 60 percent of revenue from charity lottery sales is used for prizes while 75 percent of sports lottery sales revenue will be used for prizes.
"I would suggest combining the sales channels of both lotteries," Lottery Retailers' Union chairman Huang Hsien-tung (黃顯堂) said.
Representatives from Chinatrust Financial Holding Co, the firm that runs the charity lottery, agreed with the suggestion.
"We will negotiate with Taipei Fubon Bank on behalf of the 5,000 charity lottery retailers on marketing channel integration," Chinatrust chief information officer Chang Ruu-tian (
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS