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Private buses veer into inter-provincial market
Private businesses are replacing transport cooperatives on inter-provincial bus routes, said Nguyen Ngoc Thua, director of HCM City’s Mien Dong (Eastern) Bus Station.
Private businesses eyeing potential gains improved their services, said Thua. In contrast, with cooperatives, each member owns their own bus so they cannot find the capital to improve service.
Nearly 100 bus cooperatives at the Mien Dong Bus Station stopped operations in a single month because they were edged out by bigger enterprises like Hoang Long and Kumho, he added.
For example, more than 50 private buses replaced 100 cooperative buses on the HCM City–Quang Ngai route, 20 on the HCM City–Binh Dinh route and 50 on the HCM City–Nha Trang route.
Private buses usually have a lot of passengers when leaving the station, said Thuong Thanh Hai, manager of the Mien Dong Bus Station.
Passengers departing from Mien Dong tend to choose private buses on the long journeys from HCM City to Southeast, Central and Northern destinations because service is better, he added.
The lower-quality cooperative buses resort to picking up passengers en-route to make more money, Hai said.
Meanwhile, business for cooperative buses operating out of HCM City’s Mien Tay (Western) Bus Station is not as threatened because passengers are willing to put up with the bad service to save money on the shorter routes from HCM City to the Southwest.
Transport cooperatives, suffering the most from a lack of passengers, are being forced to upgrade services if they do not want to be pushed out of the inter-provincial bus market.
VNS
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