‘Retirement lottery’ to cover more groups in 2nd phase

The government’s planned “retirement lottery”, initially meant for self-employed and informal workers, will include civil servants and workers contributing to the Social Security Fund in the second phase, the Finance Ministry said.

Announced by the ministry earlier this month, the digitally issued lottery aims to encourage people to save for their retirement in a bid to prepare Thailand before it becomes a fully aged society.

Deputy Finance Minister Paopoom Rojanasakul said on Thursday that the lottery will be funded by the National Savings Fund (NSF), and moves to amend the relevant act to finance the project has been approved by the NSF board.

“The ministry’s Fiscal Policy Office is preparing details of the lottery to propose to the Cabinet by Tuesday [July 2], or the following week if it is not ready in time,” he said.

Paopoom added that in the first phase, lottery tickets will be available to a select group of around 20 million people, including NSF members, self-employed insurers under the Social Security Act’s Article 40 and informal workers.

In the second phase, more groups will be added, including civil servants and workers under the Social Security Act’s Articles 33 and 39, or those employed by others.

The lottery will be drawn every Friday evening with five numbers winning the top prize of 1 million baht each, and 10,000 numbers winning a second prize of 1,000 baht each. The winnings will be directly deposited in the winners’ PromptPay account every week.

If winnings go unclaimed, then they will be added to the prize pool for the following week.

Each person can buy up to 3,000 baht worth of tickets every month, and the money will be put away as savings if the tickets do not win. The money can only be withdrawn when the lottery buyer reaches 60 years of age.

Paopoom said this lottery system is expected to cost the government about 800 million baht per year, far lower than the government’s senior allowance scheme, which costs nearly 100 billion baht annually.