The central bank has decided to form a refinancing fund worth Tk 1.0 billion to facilitate the bus owners to implement the bus route franchise (BRF) system for easing traffic congestion in the capital.
The decision was taken at a board meeting of the Bangladesh Bank held at its headquarters in Dhaka on Sunday, with Governor Fazle Kabir in the chair.
"The board has decided in principle to form the refinance fund," a BB senior official told the FE after the meeting without elaborating.
The special committee on bus route rationalisation (BRR) had earlier urged the BB to form the refinancing fund to help bring discipline to Dhaka's chaotic bus operations through implementation of the BRF, according to a Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA) official.
The bus owners will be eligible to get loans under the scheme at lower interest rate for remodelling the old buses or purchasing
new buses in line with the actual specification and cluster-specific colour, the DTCA official added.
Under the BRF, all bus companies with valid permits are designed to operate on one route under one company name instead of different buses operating on the same route with minimum discipline.
A study conducted by the DTCA earlier proposed to divide the city into nine clusters where cluster-specific colour buses will run under the BRF.
A cluster may have more than three to four routes as the study recommended to divide the clusters into 42 routes.
Talking to the FE, Khandaker Enayetullah, secretary general of the Dhaka Road Transport Owners Association, said that it would help the owners to purchase new buses.
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