KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke, says that significant increases in the revenues collected by the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BGLC) have led to a projected 72 per cent increase in its revenues in the 2019/20 budget.

Dr Clarke, who was responding to Opposition spokesman on finance Mark Golding’s questioning the reasoning behind the projected increase at yesterday’s meeting of the Standing Finance Committee reviewing the 2019/20 budget, noted that the commission’s revenues had increased by over $600 million up to December 2018.

The 2018/19 Estimates of Expenditure had projected $3 billion in revenues for the commission in 2018/19. However, the commission collected $3.6 billion in revenues up to December, 2018. The Government will now be seeking to increase the revenues to $5.3 billion in 2019/20, an increase of $2.3 billion over the projected figure for 2018/19.

 Dr Clarke attributed the leap in the BGLC’s revenues to the commission’s efforts to disrupt what he described as “the underground business”, or illegally operated betting businesses.

“This year alone we are seeing a billion dollar or more increase in the revenues. It is shocking the number of places in Jamaica where you have a man standing up on the corner and doing illegal betting. But, they are being disrupted by the activities of the BGLC and, based on the part of Jamaica they have covered so far and the increase in revenues, and the part of Jamaica that is left, that is where this assumption (for the increase revenues) came from,” Clarke said.

Balford Henry