The cabinet has approved a savings innovation for low-income individuals, known as the retirement lottery, which offers attractive prizes.
Deputy Finance Minister Paopoom Rojanasakul said the cabinet approved the measure on Tuesday to promote savings under the National Savings Fund (NSF) to accommodate retirement through the Retirement Savings Lottery project.
The NSF has been assigned to amend the relevant sections of the NSF Act to support the implementation of the Retirement Lottery project.
Under the Retirement Lottery's criteria, savers can purchase digital scratch-off lottery tickets through the NSF app for 50 baht per ticket, with a maximum value of 3,000 baht per month.
The retirement lottery will issue 5 million tickets per week. Prizes will be drawn every Friday at 5pm.
The first prize will be 1,000,000 baht for five winners, and the second prize will be 1,000 baht for 10,000 winners. Winners can immediately withdraw their prize money. If all prizes are not claimed in a particular draw, they will roll over to the next draw.
Regardless of whether or not the buyer's ticket is a winning ticket, all the money spent on these lottery tickets would be saved in an individual's savings account via the NSF and can be withdrawn at the age of 60.
The money in these savings accounts would also earn investment returns throughout the pre-retirement period via the NSF.
The lottery -- deemed an innovative form of savings promotion -- specifically aims to promote retirement savings for informal workers who are not part of a system that supports retirement savings. There are now around 20 million informal workers (out of a total workforce of 37.5 million). Since the NSF started its operations in 2015, it has only attracted 2.76 million members.
As of June 30 this year, the net investment value of the NSF (including workers' savings and government contributions) tallied 11.8 billion baht.
