The FTC received an interpretation request from the Bank of Taiwan: whether or not it violates the FTL after stipulating within the "Guidelines to Select and Manage the Sales Agents for the Public Lottery" if each coupon of the public lottery is fixed in one price and that the contracted sales agencies and distributors shall sell the lottery only at the face value, not in discount or over-price. The FTC Commission Meeting on November 10, 1999 reviewed the request.

Pursuant to Article 6 of the Measures Governing the Distribution of Public Lotteries, the revenue from the sale of public lotteries shall be diverted in total to the government exclusively for the funding of national pension, reserves for national health insurance, social welfare programs, or charity activities. Article 8 of the same law stipulates that selecting distributors of public lotteries must first consider the handicapped, aboriginal, and low-income/single parent family. Therefore, the legislative purposes of the public lottery distribution are for increasing social welfare funding and for protecting the employment right of the underprivileged. The main spirit of the lottery is for social welfare.

In order to facilitate a smooth distribution of the lottery, the Ministry of Finance has acted in line with the Statutes Governing the Distribution of the Public Lottery to formulate the Measures Governing the Management Public Lottery. Pursuant to that, the Bank of Taiwan adopted the "Guidelines to Select and Manage the Sales Agents for the Public Lottery," which will take effect after being approved by the Ministry of Finance. Therefore, the market created by the distribution of public lottery, though highly regulated, is mainly oriented toward social welfare purposes and the right of employment of the underprivileged. The public interests to be served as social welfare function from the lottery program are different from the public interests to be served by competition among enterprises as embraced by the Fair Trade Law. Also, Bank of Taiwan's "Guidelines to Select and Manage the Sales Agents for the Public Lottery" has been approved by the Ministry of Finance. Therefore, the FTC considers that the distribution method established by the Bank of Taiwan does not fall under the applicability of the FTL.