Bus and school van fares will not be revised despite Sunday’s fuel price increase, the operators’ associations say — but three-wheeler operators are divided, with one association insisting a rise is unavoidable.
The associations said no revision of bus fares or school van fares would be made in response to the increase, Hiru News reported on Monday morning. They added that neither school van fares nor three-wheeler fares need revising at this point.
The split
Three-wheeler operators do not speak with one voice on this. One side holds that no fare increase is needed. Against that, L. Rohana Perera, general secretary of the National Joint Three-Wheeler Drivers’ and Industrialists’ Association, said three-wheeler fares must necessarily be raised in line with the fuel price increase.
Hiru sets out the two positions without resolving which represents the larger body of operators.
What changed on Sunday
The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation raised four fuel grades from midnight on Sunday under the monthly pricing formula. Octane 95 Euro 4 petrol and Lanka Super Diesel 4 Star Euro 4 each rose Rs 15 a litre, to Rs 490 and Rs 543 respectively. Kerosene was left unchanged at Rs 285.
Bus fares in Sri Lanka are set by the National Transport Commission, and are revised when fuel prices move past a defined threshold rather than automatically with every revision — which is the mechanism behind the operators’ position that this increase does not trigger one.
Not reported
Hiru does not name the bus or school van associations that gave the undertaking, name the three-wheeler association on the opposing side of the split, or quote the National Transport Commission. It gives no figure for the increase Perera’s association is seeking, no date from which any increase might apply, and no indication of whether an application has been made to the NTC. It does not say how far diesel would have to move to trigger an automatic bus fare revision.
Corroboration. No other verified newsroom had filed on these statements at the time of writing — the Daily Mirror’s rail carried nothing on fares, Ada Derana remains behind a CloudFront 403, EconomyNext was returning a site-wide HTTP 520, and NewsFirst’s homepage served no extractable article links.
A caution on one near-identical story: The Island carries a piece headlined “Fuel price increases: Bus and trishaw operators demand fare hike” which quotes the same Mr Perera, of the same association, on the same subject, and likewise reports that the NTC said bus fares would not be revised. That article is dated 1 June 2026 and refers to an earlier revision, at which 92-octane petrol rose Rs 24 to Rs 434 — prices well below Sunday’s. It is a separate episode in a dispute that recurs with each fuel revision, and nothing from it has been used here.
