With the decline of patronage, the financial position of the local
bus sector has been worsening. Fig. 2 shows the trend of the current
account, which represents the ratio of current revenue to current
expense of the local bus sector from 1991 to 2006. In 2006, this ratio
for the entire sectorwas 92.9%; 95.3% for private operators and 86.1%
for public operators.3 Although the figure has improved in recent years, the values for public operators remain lesser than those for
private operators. Table 2 shows that in 2006 71% of the private bus
operators suffered deficits, while about 90% of the public bus operators
have produced deficits. As the total sum of deficits in the sector
approached a further 576 billion, 70% of the operators posted
deficits (private: 66.8% and public: 100%) at the operations level. This
implies that if we exclude subsidies from the total revenue and
calculate ordinary profit and loss, not a single publicly-owned
operator could pay for its own costs.