The Ministry of Transport has approved the feasibility study of the proposal of amalgamating 1000 luxury electric buses to the Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) by a Hungarian investor in a Private Public Partnership, and directed it to the Tender Committee, said a top official of the Ministry of Transport and Aviation.
According to the official this Hungarian bus deal is one step away from receiving the final approval. Meanwhile, commenting about the aforementioned deal Vice Chairman, SLTB, Priyantha Balasuriya said that providing a better service to the public thorough deploying new buses is the aim of the project. “According to the proposal, the Hungarian company will deploy 1000 buses. We are not paying for the buses, but we will be appointing drivers and conductors. We are in immediate need of replacing buses as 1,600 buses of our fleet are more than 15 years old. We cannot provide a quality service with a poor fleet like this” he explained.
As Balasuriya said the price of one such bus would be around Rs. 25 million. “As we don’t have funds to purchase new buses on our own,this deal would be a timely opportunity for SLTB. We intend to operate this as a 85% (Investor) -15% (SLTB) share basis. It won’t be a loss to us as we are just operating a bus which belongs to somebody else. Also these buses will be run under our logo”.
“We currently cover only about 1.2 million kms all around the country. We just cannot cater to the demand. With this deal,there is an opportunity to start new routes too” he added.