China lottery sales down in 2015

Official statistics released Thursday by the Chinese Ministry of Finance show that lottery sales in the country declined 3.8 percent in 2015 on a year-on-year basis.

The Chinese news agency Xinghua reports that the lotteries achieved sales of 367.88 billion yuan (US$56.1 billion ) over the year, with Welfare Lottery sales down by 2.2 percent at 201.51 billion yuan, and Sports Lottery down by 5.7 percent to 166.37 billion yuan.

In December 2015, 34.12 billion yuan’s worth of lottery tickets were sold, a year-on-year decrease of 5.6 percent.

The provinces of Henan, Fujian, and Yunnan were however success stories, where sales in each rose by more than 1 billion yuan.