For every 2.4 days, the lotteries in south China's Guangdong Province produced a millionaire last year.

The figures from the annual lottery meeting, held in Huizhou on Sunday, indicated that 151 lucky persons in Guangdong won at least 1 million yuan each from a variety of government-launched lotteries in 2006, of which 94 persons won 5 million yuan each.

These lucky persons are from all walks of life, said the operator of two lottery agents in Guangzhou surnamed Liang, who earned his reputation for big sales and high winning rate.

His two agents generated a total of 11 millionaires last year.

"Some of them are ordinary employees, vehicle maintenance workers, public servants and business owners," Liang said.

One of the two five-million-yuan winners is a worker who comes from a remote district of Guangzhou. He spent 30 yuan each time buying a kind of lottery named "Nanyue Fengcai", said Liang.

His investment sometimes could generate 100 yuan or even 1,000 yuan rewards for him but, last April he became the luckiest man to get the top prize of 5 million yuan.

The other winner was a person who runs automobile business, Liang said. Every time he would spend 100 to 300 yuan buying the lottery of "Nanyue Fengcai", he added.

Lured by the big bucks, an increasing number of people in Guangdong have purchased lotteries.

The lottery sales in the province hit a new record last year to nearly 4.9 billion yuan, ranking the first in the nation. The lotteries raised about 1.7 billion yuan public fund for social welfare in 2006.

Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong, topped other districts and cities by achieving lottery sales of 1 billion yuan, followed by Shenzhen, 960 million yuan, and Dongguan, 530 million.

Another nine districts and cities in Guangdong also recorded at least 100 million yuan lottery sales, according to the meeting.

The statistics show that people in Guangdong spent around 52 yuan each on lotteries last year, which represented an increase of 11 yuan, or 26 percent from a year before.

In Guangzhou, the personal expenditure on lottery reached 107 yuan, doubling the average amount of the whole province.

Many of the lottery winners would spend the money on new apartments, according to a survey.

For those farmer-turned-worker winners, they would be back to their hometowns and build their own houses there; for those urban residents on housing mortgage, they would settle the outstanding loans with the banks immediately.

The winners, most of them are frequent buyers, would not visit the same agent any longer for the sake of "safety", said Liang.

(China Daily March 9, 2007)