The government intends to spend Rs 4,100 crore on 38,000 electrified buses

 In NEW DELHI: According to Dipak Dash, the government will shortly establish a Rs 4,100 crore fund under the payment security mechanism (PSM) to ensure the continuous functioning of almost 38,000 electric buses that state or local transport agencies would lease from bus makers for 12 years. According to the established per-km fee, the companies will disburse payment to the operators.

According to sources, the PSM will be established with such a corpus to ensure that bus operations continue even if transportation businesses do not make their agreed-upon monthly payments. According to them, the fund would remain functioning for the whole twelve-year contract duration.

"If a state or city bus entity fails, the PSM corpus will be used to pay the operators, and the offending organization will have three months to settle the debt in full. If they don't, RBI will take the state or UT in question to recoup any unpaid balances, according to a source.

According to information obtained by TOI, to utilize this facility, the states and UTs must sign tripartite agreements with the RBI and the central government's Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL). According to the proposal for the PSM corpus, help from the US in the amount of Rs 1,200 crore would be utilized, and the government will pay the remaining sum. The Cabinet will shortly be asked to approve the idea.

The two countries recently announced intentions to develop a PSM that would ease the deployment of 10,000 electric buses built in India here during PM Narendra Modi's recent visit to the US.