Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha has appointed the director-general of the Excise Department as the new chairman of the Government Lottery Office (GLO) board.
Pachara Anantasilp was named to the position, effective immediately, under Order 5/2562 issued in Gen Prayut’s capacity as chief of the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).
Mr Pachara, the director-general of the Excise Department, will replace army chief Gen Apirat Kongsompong.
Although the order gave no details, it is public knowledge that Gen Apirat will serve as a senator, as the constitution reserves six positions for the leaders of the armed forces, the supreme commander, the defence permanent secretary and national police chief.
Shortly after the 2014 military coup, Gen Prayut used his authority under Section 44 of the interim charter to set up a new GLO board, headed by Gen Apirat, to solve chronic problems of overpriced tickets.
The board fixed the price of lottery ticket pairs at 80 baht apiece, revised quotas for vendor groups, banned bundled sales by popular numbers and increased printing of tickets to 90 million each fortnight from 37 million in 2014.
Five years on, lottery tickets are still selling at 90-100 baht, just as they did before the coup, and tickets are still bundled to fetch higher prices.
The remarkable change, however, is that the GLO has emerged as the largest contributor to state coffers, bringing in 40.8 billion baht in fiscal 2018, up from 15.3 billion in fiscal 2014.