Porte Alegre, the capital city in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande, is getting a new lottery offering. The new municipal lottery aims to increase local government revenues in order to reduce the costs of the public transport system.
The local Porte Alegre council approved the Porto Alegre Lottery last Wednesday. Bill No. 009/22, which first appeared in March, authorizes the city’s leadership to explore lottery activity. The revenue from the tickets will be used for public transport and the cost of actions and projects for accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities and the elderly.
The values of the prizes winners don’t redeem in time will go to the Municipal Public Treasury. There, the funds will provide revenue for social assistance and sports development programs. The prices of the lottery tickets and the winnings are not yet established.
Finding an Operator
After it approves the framework, the city must publish a public notice to find a private partner that will operate the service. Only a regularly constituted legal entity with headquarters and administration in the country can receive authorization for the operation of lottery products.
The winning company must have “certifications on the adoption of practices dedicated to the promotion of responsible gambling and the protection of the vulnerable.” It must also meet “the certification of the health and fluidity of the programs and equipment that will be used in the operation of the lottery modalities of the Porto Alegre Lottery.” Transparency is key, as the operator will need to agree to open its books for regular audits.
The mayor’s office, through the Secretariat of Economic Development and Tourism (SMDET), will adopt security systems against the manipulation or contracting of tickets.
Last November, Sebastião Melo, Porto Alegre’s mayor, proposed the introduction of the gambling business in order to obtain resources to subsidize student bus tickets. To shape this initiative, he had asked the Attorney General of the State, Eduardo Cunha da Costa, for support to study the legislation and indicate if it is possible.
The new lottery option follows shortly after Brazil’s Federal District approved its own. In May, the state agreed to launch its own lottery, also for social assistance and sports.
Brazil Tourism Gets a Boost
The Senate approved last week a project that updates the General Tourism Fund (Fungetur, for its Portuguese acronym). The purpose of the proposal is to facilitate access to the resources of the fund by entrepreneurs in the tourism sector.
This, the project says, will eliminate barriers to the indebtedness of financial institutions. The proposal now heads back to the Chamber of Deputies for further analysis.
The project establishes the creation of an additional and permanent source of resources for Fungetur. This would be made possible through the transfer of 3.48% of the gross revenue of the Federal Lottery and 2.97% of the gross revenue with numerical forecast lotteries (Mega-Sena, Quina and others).
All of Brazil’s lottery changes come as the result of a Federal Supreme Court decision in 2020. It unanimously decided that state and Federal District governments can operate and administer lotteries. The decision ended the federal government’s monopoly on administering lotteries in every state.
The lottery is getting a lot of attention, but other forms of gambling aren’t. Federal senators are still blocking efforts to legalize casinos, bingo and more.
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