In brief
- The Government has approved the Romanian Lottery budget for 2026: 1.587 billion lei in revenue and 1.312 billion lei in expenditure, leaving a gross profit of 275.1 million lei.
- Out of a net profit of 234.195 million lei, 122.96 million lei go to the state budget as dividends, while 11.72 million lei are shared among employees.
- The company runs on an average of 2,199 employees and an average monthly wage of 7,722 lei, has no overdue payments and 9.9 million lei in overdue receivables.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 699 of 24 August 2026
Adopted: 20 August 2026
The Romanian Lottery expects to take in more than 1.58 billion lei this year and to pay almost 123 million lei into the state budget in dividends alone, before any taxes are counted. Government Decision no. 649/2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania no. 699 of 24 August 2026, approves the 2026 revenue and expenditure budget of the LOTERIA ROMÂNĂ National Company, which operates under the authority of the Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism. Publishing the budgets of state-owned companies is part of the same transparency drive that Parliament recently extended to the mandate expenses of public enterprise management.
The legal basis is Article 4 paragraph (1) letter a) of Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 on tightening financial discipline at economic operators in which the state is the sole or majority shareholder, approved by Law no. 47/2014. The budget itself sits in the annex to the decision, reproduced in facsimile, with every indicator expressed in thousands of lei.
The revenue structure is simple: 1,550.6 million lei from operations and 36.5 million lei in financial revenue, with no subsidy and no transfer from the budget. The company does not receive public money, it sends money to the budget.
What it changes in practice
The first effect is that it sets a spending ceiling. Approved total expenditure stands at 1,311.987 million lei, of which 1,311.937 million lei is operating expenditure and 50,000 lei is financial expenditure. A budget approved by government decision becomes the limit within which the company may commit spending this year.
The second effect concerns how the profit is split. The gross result is 275.113 million lei, from which 42.954 million lei in current profit tax is deducted and to which 2.036 million lei in deferred profit tax revenue is added, giving a net profit of 234.195 million lei. Of that, 122.956 million lei goes entirely to the state budget as dividends, while 11.716 million lei represents employee profit sharing, capped at 10% of net profit.
The third effect has to do with the cost structure. The largest line is not staff but „other operating expenses”, at 795.542 million lei, over 60% of the total. Next come staff costs at 230.815 million lei, taxes, duties and similar payments at 163.906 million lei, and goods and services at 121.674 million lei.
The fourth effect is on pay. The budget provides for 186.883 million lei in wage costs and 34.805 million lei in bonuses, so a total of 221.688 million lei in wage-type expenditure. The headcount forecast for the end of the year is 2,284, the average number of employees is 2,199, and the average monthly wage per employee is 7,722 lei. Mandate contracts and the other management and control bodies cost 1.478 million lei.
The fifth effect concerns investment. The funding sources for investment amount to 86.179 million lei, entirely from own resources, with no budget allocation at all, and investment spending comes to exactly the same figure. Another state company’s budget came through the same route in September 2026, a single article and an annex: Metrorex closes 2026 with a planned loss of 295 million lei.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The decision does not change any rules, it authorises a financial year. Without it, the company has no legal framework within which to commit spending, and Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 requires budget approval by government decision precisely to enforce that discipline.
What changes in practice is visibility. Once published in the Official Gazette of Romania, the budget becomes a verifiable public document, with productivity indicators: 705.14 thousand lei in operating revenue per employee and 826.66 lei in total expenditure per 1,000 lei of total revenue.
The second change concerns the financial position. The budget records no overdue payments and 9.9 million lei in overdue receivables, money the company is owed and has not collected on time. It is the only line of tension in the whole document.
The third change concerns European funds. The budget provides for zero revenue from European funds and zero eligible expenditure from European funds, so the 2026 activity is financed exclusively from own resources.
What does not change is the company’s status. The Romanian Lottery remains a national company under the authority of the Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, and the dividends go in full to the state budget, with no local share and no other shareholders.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It puts on public record, with exact figures, what the state gambling operator takes in and what it spends.
- It confirms that the state receives almost 123 million lei in dividends, on top of nearly 43 million in profit tax.
- It shows that the company receives no subsidy and no transfer from the budget, so it costs the public purse nothing.
- It records zero overdue payments, meaning a company that pays its suppliers and obligations on time.
- It sets aside 86.2 million lei for investment, entirely from own resources.
What remains a problem
- More than 60% of expenditure falls under „other operating expenses”, a 795.5 million lei heading that the budget does not break down publicly.
- The 9.9 million lei in overdue receivables remain uncollected and the document offers no explanation for them.
- The budget is approved only in August, so more than half the financial year has gone by before spending is officially authorised.
- The annex is reproduced in facsimile, which makes automated processing harder for anyone who wants to compare the data with previous years.
- The document contains no indicator on the sums paid out in prizes or on the contribution to gambling addiction prevention funds.
Practical advice
- If you want to compare with previous years, look up the government decisions approving the Romanian Lottery budget in earlier years. The indicator structure is the same, so the lines can be placed side by side.
- Read the figures as thousands of lei. The annex is expressed entirely in thousands, so 1,587,100.00 means 1.5871 billion lei, not 1.587 million.
- If you are looking at efficiency, use row 57: total expenditure per 1,000 lei of total revenue, here 826.66 lei. That is the indicator showing what one leu of income costs.
- Do not confuse dividends with tax. The state collects 42.954 million lei in current profit tax and 122.956 million lei in dividends separately.
- If you are interested in pay policy, compare row 52 (average monthly wage of 7,722 lei) with row 51 (2,199 employees on average), not with the year-end forecast of 2,284.
- For details that do not appear here, such as the sums paid out in prizes, file a public interest information request with the company under Law no. 544/2001.
Frequently asked questions
How much profit does the Romanian Lottery make in 2026?
How much reaches the state budget?
Does the company receive money from the budget?
How many employees does it have and how much do they earn?
What are „other operating expenses”?
Why is the budget approved by government decision?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- The profit distribution exceeds the profit available for distribution by 11,715.96 thousand lei. The profit left after deductions, row 32, is 234,195.09 thousand lei. Out of it, according to the table, the following are allocated: 11,715.96 in row 33, employee profit sharing, 122,955.53 in row 34, dividends due to the state budget, and 111,239.56 in row 38, sums going to other reserves. Added together, the three destinations come to 245,911.05 thousand lei, that is exactly the value of row 33 more than the profit available. The heading of row 38 says expressly „profitul nerepartizat pe destinațiile prevăzute la Rd.33 – Rd.34”, the profit not allocated to the destinations in rows 33 and 34, so the correct figure would be 234,195.09 minus 11,715.96 minus 122,955.53, that is 99,523.60 thousand lei.
- The two sums look as though they were calculated on different bases. Row 38, 111,239.56, is exactly half of 222,479.13, that is of the profit left once employee profit sharing has been deducted, which matches the rule of a minimum dividend of 50%. Row 34, 122,955.53, is on the other hand exactly the difference up to 234,195.09, that is the whole profit, without employee profit sharing being deducted. The two rows share the accounting profit entirely between them, 122,955.53 plus 111,239.56 giving exactly 234,195.09, and employee profit sharing is left, in arithmetic terms, uncovered. At every other point the table closes correctly: rows 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 20, 26, 32, 54 and 57 each check out against the formula printed beside them.
- Two indicators are defined by reference to a document that is not published. The notes under the table say „Rd. 52 = Rd. 151 din Anexa de fundamentare nr. 2” and „Rd. 53 = Rd. 152 din Anexa de fundamentare nr. 2”, that rows 52 and 53 equal rows 151 and 152 of supporting annex no. 2, but the sole article of the decision approves one annex only, and the supporting annexes do not appear in the Official Gazette of Romania. The resulting figure cannot be reconstructed from the published data: wage-type expenditure in row 11, 221,688.30 thousand lei, divided by the average number of 2,199 employees and by 12 months, gives 8,401 lei a month, not the 7,722 lei shown in row 52. The difference comes from items excluded from the calculation, which are visible only in the annex that is not published.
Editorial analysis
A revenue and expenditure budget published in full, with the checking formulas printed next to every total, is exactly what transparency at a state owned company ought to mean. The document does stand up to checking: of the ten formulas printed in the table, nine close down to the last leu. And the outcome is easy to read. Out of the activity of the Romanian Lottery the state takes 122,955.53 thousand lei in dividends, 42,953.50 thousand lei in profit tax and 163,906.00 thousand lei in taxes, duties and similar payments, almost 330 million lei in all, more than a fifth of total revenue of 1,587,100.00 thousand lei.
The trouble starts with what cannot be seen. The largest line in the budget, 795,542.13 thousand lei, that is 60.6% of all expenditure, goes under the name „alte cheltuieli de exploatare”, other operating expenses, with no breakdown at all. At a gambling operator, that is where the answer sits to the one question the public cares about, how much of the money staked goes back to the players, but the budget carries not a single row about the prize fund, about the number of agencies or about the sums set aside for preventing addiction. A three page document says how much the state earns and stays silent about what happens on the other side of the operation.
The second limitation is the absence of any point of comparison. The table has a single column of figures, headed „Propuneri BVC 2026”, proposals for the 2026 revenue and expenditure budget, with no outturn for the previous year and no previously approved budget. Neither the figure of 1,587,100.00 thousand lei in revenue, nor the 2,199 average posts, nor the 9,899.88 thousand lei in overdue receivables says on its own whether the position is improving or getting worse. The column is still headed as proposals, moreover, although through this decision they have become an approved budget.
The third observation concerns the calendar. The budget is adopted on 20 August and published on 24 August, for a financial year of which almost eight months had already gone. Until that date the company operated without the framework that Government Ordinance no. 26/2013 requires precisely as an instrument of financial discipline, and the spending ceiling of 1,311,987.00 thousand lei applies retroactively to a period already used up. A budget approved in August can no longer be an instrument of decision, only one of record.
What should be changed
- The supporting annexes should be published together with the budget. At the very least the rows to which the notes in the decision themselves point, 151 and 152 of supporting annex no. 2. Without them, the average monthly wage of 7,722 lei stays a figure that the reader cannot rebuild from any other published element.
- The table should carry the comparison columns. Outturn for the previous year, approved for the previous year and proposed for the current year, as in the full form. It is the one change that turns a table of figures into information about the direction the company is heading in.
- „Alte cheltuieli de exploatare” should be broken down above a threshold. A simple rule, that any item exceeding 5% of total expenditure has to be itemised, would open up a heading of 795.5 million lei which today is a single line.
- Indicators specific to the gambling business. The prize fund set against the sums staked, the number of points of sale, the share of online sales and the sums paid over for addiction prevention programmes. These are data the company works out in any case and which are missing from the only public document about what it does.
- Publication in a workable format, not only as a facsimile. The annex is reproduced as an image of the form. A tabular version alongside it, with the same numbered rows, would allow the formulas to be checked automatically, which is exactly the check that would have flagged the discrepancy in row 38 before publication.
- The reason for the delay, written into the act. When the budget of an economic operator is approved in the eighth month of the year, the decision ought to say why, who was late, and under what regime spending was committed until then.
Original text of the legal act
The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.
The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania
Official Gazette of Romania no. 699 of 24 August 2026 32 pages PDF, 202 KB the act starts on page 30
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.