Buy your groceries and win the lottery

by Armen Hakobyan

Published: Friday January 09, 2009

Yerevan - Starting January 1, 2009, buying groceries in Armenia will mean having the chance to take part in an unprecedented lottery. Henceforth, any time a purchase is made, the receipt from a cash register will also serve as a lottery ticket. Consumers can expect to win from 5000 drams ($16.20) to 5 million ($16,200) in prizes.

This initiative is the brainchild of the Armenian government's State Revenue Committee. The reason behind it is to encourage consumers to ask for the printed receipt and for businesses to comply with the law, which stipulates they must give a receipt every time a transaction takes place in their establishment.

"According to our calculations, about 45 thousand business establishments will be included in this program. In other words, all those businesses that utilize cash registers. They include grocery stores, beauty salons, medical clinics, etc. All those businesses that conduct cash transactions with the public will be included," Armen Alaverdyan, the deputy chair of the State Revenue Committee, told the Armenian Reporter.

Mr. Alaverdyan noted that according to their initial calculations, the application of this new system will ensure that the state budget will generate four to five times more revenue than the anticipated expenditure to implement this new project. "Let's assume that we give out 100 million drams [in lottery winnings], then almost 400-500 million will be routed to the budget in return. That is our modest estimate. We are doing this fundamentally to introduce the culture of requesting a cash register check," said Mr. Alaverdyan.

According to experts, Armenia's market has about a 70 billion dram turnover. More than half of those businesses generating income fall under simplified or fixed taxation, which means that their tax burden is much lower resulting in lesser income to the budget.

During my last visit to our local drugstore, not only did the staff give me my receipt with the imprinted lottery number on the back but they wished me good luck with winning 1 million drams. The grocery store, on the other hand, didn't bother to give me a receipt. Responding to my query as to why, the clerk told me a state secret, "We know that the tax department will get back from the holidays on January 8. That's why we will start giving receipt after the eighth."