Grand Lotto jackpot soars to P205 M

MANILA, Philippines -  The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) announced yesterday that the jackpot of the 6/55 Grand Lotto online lottery draw today will reach more than P205 million.

Lawyer Jose Ferdinand Rojas II, PCSO general manager, said a new lotto frenzy is slowly building up after nobody got the winning number combination 41-51-55-49-39-52 during the draw last Monday that had a jackpot of P195,571,353.

He said 28 players won the second prize of P150,000 each for getting five numbers of the winning six-digit number combination.

Rojas said that nobody also won the 6/45 Mega Lotto draw last Monday with winning combination 40-02-45-37-15-16 and a jackpot worth P33,390,419.40.

The sales of the Grand Lotto also continue to increase from an average of P25 million per draw to P53 million per draw.

This is the first time this year that the Grand Lotto jackpot breached P200 million after a balikbayan from New York won the biggest lotto jackpot of P741 million in November last year.

The Grand Lotto game, fast becoming popular among lotto fans, is drawn every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

The second biggest lotto jackpot was P347 million for the 6/49 Super Lotto draw last Feb. 22, which was shared by two winners in Metro Manila.

A 61-year-old construction worker from Novaliches in Quezon City won the third biggest lotto jackpot worth P241 million in 2008.