THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Amid delays in the Rs 814 crore KIIFB loan promised by the government to buy new buses, the transport department has moved to borrow Rs 1,000 crore from a German bank. Minister Antony Raju and Department Secretary Biju Prabhakar held discussions with KFW German bank officials in Delhi. German bank officials said that the loan can be made available if there is a guarantee from the state government and permission from the central government.

A letter will soon be written to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and the Ministry of Finance in the hope of getting central approval in this regard. Tamil Nadu Transport Corporation had received a loan of 2000 crores from this bank. A loan of Rs 817 crore was received from the German development bank KFB for the project to establish a green energy corridor in the state. The loan was given as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions and promote green energy consumption.

The management estimates that KSRTC will be able to recover from the loss only by purchasing a thousand more buses immediately. A thousand electric buses will be bought shortly if the German loan is possible.

It was on last May that the government gave permission to KSRTC to purchase buses with KIIFB funding. The transport department decided to purchase diesel buses along with electric buses. In the first phase, it was decided to invite tenders for the purchase of 150 electric buses and 284 diesel buses, but the loan was not received.

237 old buses

Currently, KSRTC is putting 237 expired buses on the road. About a thousand buses are in bad condition. Instead of doing 5200 services per day, only 4,300-4,400 services are being done now. Although there is a report that if the number of bus services is increased, the revenue will increase and the expenses including salaries can be found on their own, since the process of purchasing busses was not done, it could not be implemented. The arrival of new buses will solve this problem. The current collection is an average of Rs.6 crores. If it reaches 8 crores, we can barely escape the loss. If you want to increase the collection, you need more buses.