China lottery sales continued to rise in 2016

The Chinese official news agency Xinghua reports that according to figures from the Ministry of Finance released Monday, Chinese lottery sales in 2016 rose 7.3 percent year-on-year to 394.64 billion yuan (about US$57.53 billion).

Welfare lottery sales increased by 2.5 percent to 206.49 billion yuan, and the sports lottery rose 13.1 percent to 188.15 billion yuan, the Ministry of Finance revealed.

In December, lottery tickets worth 36.59 billion yuan were sold, a year-on-year increase of 7.2 percent. Welfare lottery sales rose 4 percent to 19.98 billion yuan and sports lottery sales rose 11.4 percent to 16.61 billion yuan.

The provinces of Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan, Henan and Yunnan each saw their lottery sales value rise by more than 2 billion yuan.