State-Owned Lottery Achieves $17M Profit in First Year

The Belize Government Lotteries Limited has generated over one hundred million dollars in sales and seventeen million in profits in its first year of operations. Today, the Minister of Finance, John Briceno, spoke about the success of the state-owned company following an audit conducted by a Belizean auditing firm. Since the government took over lottery operations last year, Briceno says the company has generated a significant profit, which will be used to expand the National Health Insurance scheme and fund sports. While touching on the company’s stellar performance, Briceno also drew a stark comparison between the profits seen under the previous administration and what the company has collected in one year.

John Briceño, Prime Minister, Belize: “For the period of November, well, when the first sale was in November 21st of 2023, right up to November 30th of 2024, BGL recorded sales of $111,164,580.18 cents, which was for Boledo and Lottery sales only. If you can recall earlier, under the Barrow Boledo, and point intended, their sales were recording like $15 million and $16 million, going on to $19 million when they heard that the government was considering in taking back all of a sudden and started to jump 20 plus million dollars that they sell and they are projecting in the future 50 million, all kinds of numbers you know ?  But here we are in the first 12 months of full operations of selling Boledo. We have already surpassed $111 million. And we were not trying to cheat the Belizean people with their winnings, because the other crowd they were reporting under 70% in the winnings. I think it was 64%.  The prize winnings paid out during that period, Madam Speaker, we paid out $77,563,364.50. It reflects a payout percentage of 70% of sales we give back to the Belizean people. The general administrative and operational expenses were $16,614,198.96 which the gross profit after our cost of all sales including prize winnings and commissions was $17,596,497.12.”

The company is commemorating its first anniversary with a one-million-dollar raffle, which comes to an end on December 22.