The first sale of new two- and three-digit lottery tickets will be next month at the earliest.

Finance Minister Chalongphob Sussangkarn, who reported to the Cabinet on the progress of tackling the two- and three-digit lottery issue - introduced by the previous government as a means of tackling the underground lottery - said Cabinet members all agreed in principle that the Government Lottery Office (GLO) could continue to operate the two- and three-digit lotteries but with adjustments.

Instead of allowing sellers to write down numbers as the buyers pleased, the new lottery tickets will look like the six-digit ones, he said. They will also be limited to 30 million tickets per round despite much greater demand, in order to avoid the vice leading the public astray.

The GLO will produce the new tickets and distribute them for sale as soon as possible, and this can be done without waiting for legal amendments, Chalongphob said, adding that this would not mean an amnesty for the previous government or those involved in the old two- and three-digit lotteries.

The money disbursement from ticket sales will be the same as in the six-digit lottery: 60 per cent will be prize money, 28 per cent will go to the Finance Ministry and 12 per cent will cover the GLO's administration fees. He said the prizes would not be as high as the old version, in which the prize rolled over to the next round if no winner came forward.

Chalongphob said the new lottery should be implemented within the current government's term.

Meanwhile, Wanchai Surakul, acting director of the GLO, said his agency was speeding up its conclusion of the new lottery's details and that they should be complete next week. The Cabinet will then give it further consideration, and tickets can be sold to the public next month at the earliest. In order to prevent future problems, he said the GLO would also consult with the Council of State once more to determine whether it could legally operate the two- and three- digit lotteries.

Wanchai said 30 million tickets per round would be sufficient to satisfy demand but that ticket pricing had not yet been decided. The new tickets will be a far cry from the previous practice of giving sellers blank lottery forms to fill in with the numbers according to customers' wishes, he added.

The new tickets will be allocated to the 5,000 registered two- and three-digit lottery ticket sellers, he said.

He admitted the new lottery would reduce the vendors' profits, because it had to comply with a law requiring 12 per cent of the money raised through the sales to go towards offsetting administration expenses.

With 60 per cent of the profits being used as cash prizes, in accordance with the law, Wanchai said there would be some kind of jackpot to motivate buyers.

With problems of ticket overpricing and the re-emergence of the underground lottery, the new two- and three-digit lotteries should reduce people's motivation to buy underground lottery tickets, he said.

However, Sangsit Piriyarangsan, chairman of the Monetary and Financial Committee under the National Legislative Assembly, disagreed. He said the government had made a bad decision and that the new lottery would not solve the underground-lottery problem. On the contrary, he claimed the new law would promote the illegal lottery, which still allowed people to choose numbers as they pleased.

He suggested the new lottery utilise technology that would allow people to choose their own numbers and that if highly popular numbers won, the winners would have to share the prize.

Two- and Three-Digit Lottery Sellers' Club president Warawut Kamolwittayanont yesterday said the group opposed the government's plan on the grounds that the new method would yield smaller profits for ticket vendors. They would also be burdened if the new ticket sets they bought were not sold out. In comparison, the old blank lottery forms could always be numbered according to customers' wishes, he said.