APSRTC staff try to put financial sense into management

The Andhra Pradesh Road Transport Corporation employees are trying to put some financial sense into their management that had taken big loans at high rate of interest and putting the big amounts in banks as FDs and getting lower rate of interest. Alleging there was financial mismanagement at the top in the RTC, the employees charged that their management had no planning. Already the RTC was in doldrums by running into debts of over Rs 2000 crores. To add to that, there was no financial planning. The point at issue is the RTC taking a loan of Rs 450 crore from HUDCO for the purchase of some 3000 new buses. But the interest the corporation would be paying to HUDCO was as high as 11 to 13%. This money had now been put in commercial banks for 6 to 7% interest. The reason is bus building takes time and the manufacturing companies take lot of time to deliver the buses. As a result the corporation was losing over Rs 2 crore as interest every month. The RTC management, however, tried to defend itself saying it was not easy to get heavy loans from banks. That is why they had to take a big loan at one go. The employees differed with the argument.