The Hindu Business Line : CM strikes down proposal for hike in fares by APSRTC

The Chief Minister suggested a three-pronged strategy to increase the revenue of APSRTC — increasing the occupancy ratio, improving the internal efficiency and plugging the loopholes in purchases.

Our Bureau

Hyderabad, June 8 The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has rejected a proposal by the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) management to increase bus fares and offset the burden caused by the recent hike in diesel prices.

Dr Reddy instead advised it to absorb the burden by improving internal efficiency.

The Chairman of APSRTC, Mr M. Satyanarayana Rao, and the Managing Director, Mr Dinesh Reddy, met the Chief Minister on Saturday and put forward various proposals at least for a minimum hike in the fares to meet the extra burden on the RTC revenue because of the hike in prices

In the face of the diesel price hike, the management said that, they wanted to run the APSRTC on commercial lines and proposed to increase the fares considerably for express, luxury, A/C and ghat road services to net a revenue of Rs 178.68 crore and marginally for city buses and Palle Velugu services covering 86 per cent of villages, to get another Rs 262.60 crore.

Covering losses

The Chief Minister, however, rejected these proposals and suggested a three-pronged strategy to increase the revenue of APSRTC — increasing the occupancy ratio, improving the internal efficiency and plugging the loopholes in purchases.

Mr Rao said the annual loss to the corporation due to the diesel price hike would be around Rs 337 crore a year and Rs 305 crore for the remaining ten months of the current fiscal.

According to Mr Dinesh Reddy the corporation would increase its non-traffic revenue by constructing commercial complexes on its properties.

On one such complex proposed on 9.5 acres at Musheerabad here, the RTC would net Rs 100 crore in the next two days.

He also said that the network of bus services would be expanded to cover new areas and the frequency on existing routes increased by purchasing 3,000 buses.

More Stories on : Roadways | Andhra Pradesh

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