Government Seeks Approval to Transfer Assets to National Bus Company

The government sought parliamentary approval to transfer public transport assets to the National Bus Company Limited. Minister of Transportation, Dr. Louis Zabaneh, took the Public Transportation Investment Bill, 2026, to the House of Representatives today.  The bill seeks to approve and confirm the government’s investment in the company, including the transfer of certain public transport assets. It also provides for proposed exemptions from taxes and duties.  NBC is an entity guided by a board, rather than managed by the Ministry of Transportation or the Department of Transport. Defending the upgrade of the NBC was Freetown’s Area Rep Francis Fonseca.

Francis Fonseca, Freetown Area Representative: “The public transportation challenges that we have faced in this country go back for decades, decades. It really is a disgrace that we have not been able to resolve this issue before on behalf of the Belizean people. The public transportation in any country, in any society, is a critical factor. It’s the way that many of our public officers get to work. It’s a way that many of our people move from district to district, go to work every morning from all over the country. The public transportation, of course, is also vital to economic development, and vital to your economy, vital to the tourism sector, you must have a functioning, effective, public transportation sector. It’s critically important for your own citizens first so that they can move efficiently across the country. But also as I said, for your economy, the wider economy for your tourism sector, it’s critically important as well. And so for decades we’ve been complaining about this. Decades you go back 20 years and you hear people calling in and on the morning shows and complaining about busses, the quality of busses, the standards of our busses. We all know about the chaos on the roads, the racing and all of that sort of thing which has put our people’s lives at risk. You know the condition of these busses, the windows they can’t go up close when it rains people get wet up, the chairs are torn up, all sort of they break down all the time, catch fire, all sorts of problems. These people now on the other side really have audacity to come here today and to be trying to undermine the work that the this government and this minister and his team at the Ministry of Transport are doing to change that reality. They were all those years in government did absolutely nothing. Nothing to upgrade the public transportation system in this country Absolutely nothing. They were quite satisfied with the status quo. Didn’t care about the Belizean people who were complaining every single day about the quality of buses on our roads.”

The proposed legislation addresses the company’s assets and investment arrangements. Separate motions brought to the House today sought approval for NBC’s operating concessions along the western and southern corridors.