Government is changing how it will invest in the newly formed National Bus Company. Instead of transferring bus terminals valued at twenty million dollars, Cabinet will lease those public assets to the company. Government will now build its stake by purchasing new buses over the next two years. Transport Minister Doctor Louis Zabaneh says the bigger goal is to replace NBC’s entire fleet with electric buses by the end of 2027.
Louis Zabaneh
Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
“Note that government has the option to nationalize the sector, but what would that have meant? It would have meant that government would have had to find the money to compensate the operators for their business. The independent auditors who valued the seventeen operators now that started the NBC, we have one more that is coming in, and four more who are writing in line, that added up to a little over nineteen million dollars. Extrapolating from there with the other operators it would have required twenty-five million dollars from government to take out all the operators in a nationalization. But instead, what we did was to have all the operators agree, who joined the NBC, to be a part of a PPP. You have not heard anybody come in the media who are members of the NBC to say that their hands were twisted to be a member of the NBC.”
Next on NBC’s agenda is a new electronic system for tickets and payments.
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