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Fuel price cut helps MTC save 85 lakh in 20 days

Started by sajiv, Dec 26, 2008, 10:31 PM

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sajiv


CHENNAI: The two-rupee reduction in diesel price early this month has helped the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) save about Rs 85 lakh in the last 20 days.

The price cut has come as relief for the MTC which had suffered a revenue loss of Rs 3.5 crore last month due to the rains.

The transport corporation has around 3,300 buses of which 3,000 are on road daily, while the remaining vehicles are kept as spare buses. "As our buses run an average of 280 km each every day, we need about 2.10 lakh litres of fuel for our operations. Diesel price reduction has decreased our expenses by Rs 4.20 lakh a day now. This would help us to maintain the corporation more effectively,'' a senior MTC official told The Times Of India.

MTC has a daily average revenue collection of about Rs 1.7 crore and many officials have already been insisting that ticket fare which was not hiked for seven years now, should be increased to ensure smooth functioning of the transport corporation.

"We adopt several ways to increase the revenue of the corporation. In this direction, we have already initiated fuel saving exercises and have instructed our drivers accordingly. We have given each of them a card where they have to enter the daily fuel consumption and that would be assessed by the depot manager periodically. Earlier, our buses used to run 3.58 km per litre fuel, but now it has increased to 4.32 km per litre. We have also taken efforts to market the space inside and outside the buses to advertisers. We expect that revenue through advertisement would fetch us about Rs 20 crore a year,'' said another official.

Meanwhile, official sources in the transport department said the state government might not allot funds to MTC to procure 350 more new buses by March 2009 due to paucity of funds. The government had promised in the budget this year that it would provide funds for the corporation to procure 1,000 new buses in 2008-09, but had allotted funds only for 650 buses so far.