Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-08-07

Deployment of 1000 Environment Friendly Buses for passenger transport

- Although 7,257 buses should have to be deployed for the daily passenger transportation by the Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB), at present, the SLTB possesses only 6,540 buses. Further, it has also been found that 500 new buses have to be added into the fleet of buses of the SLTB in place of the buses that have to be taken out from the fleet, due to the expiry of their life span or accidents. Measures are being taken presently to procure new 892 buses for the SLTB and it has been found that 1,000 buses have to be immediately purchased to maintain the passenger transportation services uninterruptedly.
The proposal made by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, to enter into an Agreement with the Csepel Holdings Ltd., of Hungary, for the deployment of 250 environment friendly electric buses and 750 Hybrid buses, taking into consideration the proposal submitted for 1,000 electric and hybrid buses to be added to the Sri Lanka Transport Board with the financial assistance of the Government of Hungary and its Export and Import Bank, for the fulfillment of the above requirement, was approved by the Cabinet.