The instant lottery was instituted in 2015 but is not yet operating. According to news outlet Valor, there is still no set date for holding a new auction, as the priority of the economic team in the short term is to regulate the taxation of electronic bets.
The taxation of online betting could guarantee public coffers something between R$ 12 billion (US$c 2.35b) and R$ 15 billion (US$ 2.95b) , according to calculations by government sectors. Executive sources point out that the collection with electronic bets would initially reach R$ 5 billion (US$ 985m) per year.
The increase in Union revenues is essential to give sustainability to the new fiscal framework, recently announced by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad.
After this stage, the expectation is that there will be a concentration of technicians from the economic team in finalizing the new Lotex concession model, which could also yield additional revenue for the Union.
According to technicians from the economic area, the government is studying a new business plan to remove Lotex from the paper. The future desire should allow Caixa to enter the dispute, which was not allowed in a previous attempt to carry out the concession. “The idea is to temporarily bring the scratch card to Caixa until the new model is ready.”
In October 2019, the previous government even auctioned Lotex. The Estrela consortium, formed by the British International Game Technology (IGT) and the American Scientific Games International (SGI), emerged victorious from the process, however, ended up giving up signing the contract in October 2020. At the time, they claimed, among other reasons, the lack of an agreement for the distribution of the new lottery through the Caixa lottery retailers.
Government technicians said that a decision by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in September 2020 also contributed to the withdrawal of the consortium, which understood that the Union does not have a monopoly on the exploitation of lotteries. As a result, the assessment is that the business would have lost its attractiveness because states and municipalities could also operate in the market.
Source: Valor
