GTECH and state lottery need only Treasury approval

State lottery Totalizator Sportowy (TS) has reached an agreement with its on-line IT operator GTECH, under which GTECH will continue servicing TS until the year 2011. If the deal is approved by Treasury Minister Aldona Kamela-Sowinska, it will ward off the threat of TS being left without an IT system to service lotteries. The current deal with GTECH runs out in the fall. In February the previous TS management negotiated a new ten-year deal, but the Treasury Ministry, as the owner of TS, refused to approve it, claiming that the circumstances of selecting GTECH were not transparent. Since it would take at least several months for a different operator to implement an IT system, TS's operations would be greatly jeopardized if it had not reached a compromise with GTECH. According to the negotiated agreement, GTECH is to get $100 million over the next ten years for servicing TS's lotteries. Last year TS recorded revenues of zl.2.2 billion. (Rzeczpospolita, May 12-13, p.B1) T.J.