Commerce urges Lottery Office to ensure fair trade amid vendor surge
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The Commerce Ministry will ask for cooperation from the Government Lottery Office to investigate the new lotto business as the number of sellers has been skyrocketing.
“This could lead to unfair trade practices,” Deputy Commerce Minister Natthawut Saikua said yesterday.
Lottery trading has been increasing every month. The ministry needs to look into the reason as many small operators are in the industry, he said.
According to the Business Development Department, new lotto vendor registrations reached 1,521 in May. However, only 267 of those have clear addresses, while the rest have shared shareholders. Some addresses are shared by more than 20-40 lotto traders.
Last month, 818 new lotto sellers signed up, of which 97 have clear address and the others duplicated addresses.
The department also reported that 1,170 companies went out of business last month, a jump of 41 per cent from May and a rise of 12 per cent from June last year.
Of the closed-down business, 34 were exporters. There were fewer export businesses failing because the baht lost some of its strength.
Last month, new business registrations increased 19 per cent year on year to 5,753.
This is the most in 111 years since figures started to be collected. This could be attributed to the government’s Bt2-trillion investment project, which has stimulated the growth of construction and development companies.
Other rising businesses are retailers and wholesalers of machinery and lotto vendors.
The first half of the year saw new company registrations surge 21 per cent to 36,382 and company closures drop 3 per cent to 5,391.
