PRTC to add 100 buses to its fleet

Gagan K. Teja

Patiala, May 29

Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) is all set to add another 100 buses to its existing fleet keeping in view the demand of expanding its services in the neighbouring states, mainly Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

The corporation will be adding 100 ordinary buses of Leyland Company in 2016 and the first phase of adding 50 buses has already begun. This will boost its daily revenue further, which is an all-time high with a monthly average of Rs 97 lakh.

The PRTC had added 251 new buses to its fleet in 2015, which had helped the sinking corporation to stabilise its financial condition to a large extent. The corporation, which had financial liabilities of over Rs 300 crore, is now left with pending liabilities of roughly Rs 50 crore.

The corporation had taken Rs 25 crore loan for adding these buses, apart from Rs 25 crore from the state government through the Punjab Infrastructure Development Board. It is currently paying Rs 7 lakh per day as bank instalment for this loan.

On date, the PRTC is running 1,050 buses against its sanctioned fleet of 1,075. However, 50 of its buses have outlived their life. The first lot will help in replacing these buses since a lot of money is used in their maintenance and the second will help them in covering the missing mileage.

Though the sanctioned mileage of the PRTC is 3.5 lakh km per day, the corporation was only covering about 2.5 lakh km per day. Their missing mileage is only 79,000 km per month. In order to put the new buses to use and cover this missing mileage, PRTC managing director Ravinder Singh said they had urged the Punjab government to sign an interest agreement with Himachal Pradesh for extending 2,500 km per day on different routes in Himachal Pradesh. 

The managing director said: “The addition of these buses would help us in covering not only the remaining liabilities but will also help us in generating additional revenue that can be used to upgrade the PRTC infrastructure”.