AFM opens the call for the purchase of school minibuses

The Administration of the Environmental Fund will run between September 8 and November 8 the application session for local administrations for the purchase of electric minibuses, and not only, intended for the transport of students, said Laurenţiu Neculaescu, president of the AFM, for DC News.

"The county councils are the ones that apply, but on behalf of the administrative-territorial units within the respective county. Based on a request, the City Hall makes a request to the County Council, which, when it submits the application to the Environment Fund Administration, must have those requests of the respective city halls behind it. The program begins on September 8, when the application for submission of requests will open, and will end on November 8, or until the budget is exhausted. This year we have an allocated budget of 300 million lei. We will go with a 200% overcontract, which means that, in the end, there will be 600 million lei in total", said Laurenţiu Neculaescu.

The President of AFM specified that three categories of minibuses are eligible under the program: full-electric, which have a cost per vehicle of around 250,000-300,000 euros, plug-in hybrid whose price per piece varies between 100,000-150,000 euros , and CNG (compressed natural gas) minibuses, which are the cheapest. The number of minibuses financed by AFM will be determined according to the option of each applicant.

In this context, each eligible town hall will also receive funding for the charging station for electric minibuses.

"We have over 1000 beneficiaries for electric car fueling stations in implementation. We have already had two sessions where we funded charging stations for electric cars, and if I am not mistaken, there are around 3000 stations nationwide. Therefore, there is also a certain infrastructure prepared for charging these electric minibuses, and if the town halls do not have a station at all, it will be eligible through this request", Laurenţiu Neculaescu pointed out.

The head of the AFM showed that the company that will be in charge of installing the charging stations will be established by the county council, according to the procurement procedure specific to each administrative unit. Mr. Neculaescu also specified that the concrete implementation of the program depends on the delivery terms of the producers and mentioned that the allocation for each county was made according to the number of students. Thus, for counties with a maximum of 40,000 students, 7 million lei are allocated per county, for counties with a number of students between 40,000 and 60,000 students, 15 million lei were allocated, and counties with more than 60,000 students each have a allocation of 25 million lei.