Inquire prize bond results online

The finance ministry has launched a software to help people find out the results of the draw of prize bonds easily.

"Inquiring the results manually is quite strenuous. As a result, the popularity of prize bonds has gradually declined," Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, senior secretary of the ministry's Internal Resources Division, told the inauguration in Dhaka Saturday.  

He said the new software will hopefully make it easier to know the lottery results.

People will have to browse www.irdbd.online to know the results. The results can be inquired in two ways.

The prize bond numbers can be searched by typing in Bengali or English in the search box on the website. To search multiple numbers, the numbers must be separated with a comma (,). Besides, to search a series of numbers, a hyphen (-) must be used between the first and last numbers of the series.

The second way is to inquire about the results by uploading Microsoft Excel files. If someone has many prize bonds, they will have to write bond numbers in a Microsoft Excel sheet and upload it to the site to browse the results.

People also can subscribe to this website for automated mail notification after each draw. The website now offers lottery results for the past two years.

At present, there are 67 series of prize bonds available in the country.

Awards are given to 46 bonds in each series every three months. In a lottery, a total of 3,082 prize bonds are awarded in all series.

Md Shah Alam, director of the Department of National Savings, said all the prizes do not reach the winners often as many people are unaware of the draws.

Md Shafiqur Rahman, joint secretary of the Internal Resources Division, presided over the software inauguration.