Lotto jackpot hits P160 M

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has announced that the jackpot of the 6/55 Grand Lotto online lottery draw is expected to hit P160 million on Saturday’s draw after nobody won the P148,179,402 jackpot prize during the draw last Wednesday.

Jose Ferdinand Rojas II, PCSO general manager, said as of yesterday the jackpot prize of the Grand Lotto has already breached P150 million, the biggest jackpot so far this year.

Rojas said the jobless man from Surigao del Norte who recently got a windfall of P55,645,466.40 for the 6/49 Super Lotto draw two weeks ago has been the biggest winner so far in 2012. 

He said eight players won P150,000 each in the Grand Lotto draw last Wednesday after they got five digits of the six-digit winning number combination 50-29-26-40-32-18.

The ticket sales of the Grand Lotto continued to rise from P46.6 million to P49.9 million for the last draw.

A 60-year-old balikbayan from New York City had won the biggest lotto jackpot in Philippine history worth P741,176,323.20 in the Grand Lotto draw on Nov. 29, 2010.

The PCSO said the lone winner was with his family who were then shopping at the Royal Duty Free store at the Subic Bay Freeport in Olongapo City when he decided to buy five lotto tickets using the lucky pick system wherein the computer picks the number combination for the bettor.

The lotto outlet owned by Necitas Garcia, located inside the Royal Duty Free, sold the ticket with the winning number combination 11-16-42-47-31-37.