And while the price of a gallon of diesel will continue to be a punishing problem for bus operators - as it approaches the 1 month mark, the National Bus Company has other hurdles to cross. The reviews from the public have been mixed as the chronic problems of the bus industry continue to plague the new company.
The minister says that transformation of the sector will not come overnight:
Dr. Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"New electric buses should start to arrive in September, and phase in up to the end of next year, 2027 and the fleet that is now in place will gradually be replaced by these new buses."
"These issues started out from 2004 when we had the collapse of the consolidated Novelo enterprise and since then with new road service permits being given out we've had the situation that really motivated us to take this approach of a National Bus Company owned, jointly by the people of Belize through the government by operators and institutional investors."
"We ask the public to understand that this correction, this improvement cannot be done in 20 days, cannot be done in 20 hours and I'm sure some people would have wanted it to happen in 20 minutes. It cannot happen, it will take 20 months for you to start to see the benefits, why? Because it's not like we got a pool of 100 million dollars at our hands and we can just bring buses and have them all ready all at once."
