50% rise in PMV insurance

By KEVIN PAMBA
THE high rate of accidents involving public motor vehicles (PMVs) has forced  the compulsory third party (CTP) premium insurance charges for this category of vehicles to also increase by a whopping 50%.
This became effective yesterday.
PMV operators began paying the new CTP premium of K1,130.85, a 50% increase of K376.95 from last year’s rate of K753.90.
The Motor Vehicle Insurance Ltd (MVIL) announced the new rates yesterday in a newspaper advertisement.
“These increases were affected to various vehicle classes in varying degrees from historic nature of high accident frequencies to low accident frequencies.
“The basis for these increases was to ease the subsidising pressures imposed by vehicle classes with high rates of accidents on classes of vehicles with low rates of accidents.
“The percentage increases on base premium are 50%, 25%, 10% and 5% accordingly,” MVIL stated when announcing the new rates approved by the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission.
The CTP increase for PMVs compares with only a K22.10 increase for other people ferrying commercial vehicle category, the rental/hire car. Rental or hire car CTP has gone up from KK441.94 to K464.04.
The CTP for commercial taxis went up from K342 to K513.
The CTP for most vehicle types have also increased except for private sedans and private vans (9-seaters) and vehicles used for emergency services and religious work.
MVIL stated in the advertisement that the rates it provided were “base rates and do not include normal statutory charges such as GST (10%) NRSC (5%) and Insurance Commission Levy (1%)”.
It said the increases were gazette on Jan 12 and became effective yesterday.