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Mozambique: Bus Fares to Increase
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
25 January 2008
Posted to the web 25 January 2008
Maputo
The publicly owned Maputo bus company, TPM, has announced an 11 per cent increase in its fares as from 1 February, reports Friday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
The last time the bus fares went up was three years ago, when the price of a flat fare ticket rose from 3.5 to 4.5 meticais. The new increase adds 50 centavos to the fare, so that a ticket will cost five meticais (at current exchange rates, there are about 24 meticais to the US dollar).
The increase was inevitable because of the company's increased running costs, and particularly the rise in the price of fuel. On Wednesday, the government announced an immediate increase of 8.1 per cent in the price of petrol and of 14 per cent in the price of diesel.
TPM spokesperson Boaventura Lipanga said "this fare increase should have occurred a long time ago, but the company postponed it, because of its social responsibility as the only publicly owned road transport company in Maputo".
He added that this increase will not solve the company's problems, since the costs of TPM's operation will remain far higher than its fare income. Thus the company will continue to depend for its survival on the subsidy that it receives from the state budget
"We should have adjusted the fares long ago, and we had been postponing it, but now we feel that we can no longer avoid it. We must increase the fares", said Lipanga.
However the far rise only applies to journeys within the Maputo and Matola municipal limits. The TPM fare for trips from Maputo to the districts of Boane or Marracuene will still cost only 10 meticais.
TPM has about 40 operational buses. Only a couple are fuelled by Mozambique's own natural gas. Most run on diesel.
The private operators who run the minibus-taxis (commonly known as "chapas") that provide much of Maputo's passenger transport also want to put up their fares, though they have not yet said by how much.
Maputo and Matola chapa owners met on Thursday at the Maputo headquarters of the Road Transport Federation (FEMATRO).
The FEMATRO chairperson, Rogerio Manuel, cited in Friday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax" said a far increase "has to happen as quickly as possible, and it will happen in the next few days. Transporters have already tolerated as much as they can. The current fare should have been raised in 2007, but that didn't happen".
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He thought the only alternative solution would be for the government to subsidise private transporters, "but I really don't think that's going to happen".
Currently, the chapas charge a flat fare of five meticais. Since there are many hundreds of the mini-buses on the streets of Maputo and Matola the business is clearly profitable at this level of fares. If they were losing money, the owners would soon take their vehicles off the roads.
FEMATRO demands the right to fix higher fares whenever there is a rise in fuel price. But it is strangely silent on the occasions when the government cuts fuel prices.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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