Performance Analysis of Publicly Owned Urban Bus Companies in India

This paper analyses productivity and profitability performance of publicly owned Urban Bus Companies (UBCs) in India. Annual data for a sample of nine UBCs, for which consistent data are available from 2000-01 to 2010-11, are used for this analysis. We find that there is a wide disparity among the UBCs according to their productivity and profitability levels and growth. Even though six out of nine sample UBCs experienced improvement in their productivity, only one of them could improve its profitability from 2000-01 to 2010-11. This is because none of the UBCs could increase their fare in line with the increase in their input factor prices during 2000s