Raimundo do Rosário | No decision on different bus fares for residents and ‘blue card’ holders

The Traffic Committee’s proposal to establish different fares for the use of public buses for residents and non-residents might not move forward, Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, hinted yesterday.

On the sidelines of the ceremony of the inauguration of the president of the Legislative Assembly, Rosário said:  “I reaffirm in a very clear way that this was a proposal and not a decision. Nothing is decided yet.”

Nevertheless, the Secretary continued to note that “it is normal everywhere that local citizens benefit more than the others.”

Rosario also explained that the idea of raising the bus fares in MOP1 came along with the idea of “slightly” reducing the share of the government’s subsidy According to Rosário, the real fare at the moment should be  MOP6.60, noting, “if people pay only MOP2 that means that they are paying not even one third of the real cost,” adding that such fares are have not been updated for as long as 10 years and fares are higher in neighboring regions.

“We were asked to keep our budget as low as last year, a situation that we know that isn’t really possible but we will try our best to keep the budget in a similar rate,” he said, noting that the growth should be somewhere in between “2, 3 or 4 percent at the most.”

Rosário mentions that contributing towards such expenses is the subsidy conceded to the three bus companies which had reached over MOP1 billion last year. The Secretary wants it to be lowered to around MOP700 million to MOP800 million with the increase of the bus fare. RM