Tanzanian gov't proposes to reduce bus fars by 24%

The government of Tanzania has proposed to reduce the country's bus fares by 24 percent in the wake of a decline of fuel prices at local pump stations.

The Tanzania Surface and Marine Transport Regulatory Authority has issued a directive through its consumer consultative council on reducing bus fares.

The directive stated that since fuel prices on the global market had dropped substantially transport costs in the country must also drop to reflect the changes.

Consumer Consultative Council Chairman Gidiad Ngewe expected that after the reduction in transport costs food prices would also reduce automatically in the country due to transport reasons.

The 24-percent reduction was proposed on grounds that fuel prices at local pump stations had gone down by 28 percent so far.

Ngewe explained that his council had asked for a 14-percent reduction on bus fares due to the decline of oil prices while the other 10-percent reduction was based on other factors.

The government of Tanzania has, starting this year, begun issuing weekly indicative pricing for all filling stations in the country so as to bring down the fuel prices, which still hovered after oil prices had come down on international markets.

The government expects to bring down inflation through this move.

Fuels carry a 10-percent weight in the basket of communities that are used by the country to calculate its inflation.

Though the government had planned to bring down the country's inflation to 7 percent by June last year but the annual inflation rose to double digits in September and shot further up to 12.3 percent in November because of high fuel and food prices.

By:
Thomas
Dar-es-salaam