From the 2026 budget audit
277 milliárd Ft to compensate a state bus operator — without asking if it's efficient.
The compensation pays a state-owned operator for running routes it would otherwise not run; no competing bidder has ever had the chance to run them for less.
About 71,100 Ft per taxpayer per year — 277,000.0 millió Ft total. Year-1 net saving of 46,166.7 millió Ft as the route tender process begins; the operator-level compensation is replaced by competitively-established route subsidies.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: bus services on thin-demand routes, kept running by state compensation for the operator's reported losses. The unseen: the gap between the operator's reported cost — untested by any competitive bidder — and what a tendered public-service-obligation contract would establish as the genuine cost of running those routes. That gap is the soft-budget margin, and it is funded by every taxpayer every year.
Objection
"No private operator would run rural routes — only the state can guarantee service to every settlement."
Answer
In countries where route-level public-service-obligation tenders run — Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands — private operators do bid for rural routes, at prices below the state operator's reported loss. The tender specifies which routes must be served, at what frequency; operators bid for the minimum subsidy to run them. The service is guaranteed by the contract, not by the state operator's monopoly; the competitive tender establishes the genuine cost rather than accepting the reported one.
Share if you think bus routes should be competed for, not assigned to one operator without a cost check.
The analyst's verdict
Compensation for bus passenger public service
Rationale
This line — 277,000.0 millió Ft, the third-largest in the chapter — is the bus passenger service "ellentételezés" (compensation), a separate and much larger payment than the bus "költségtérítés" (cost reimbursement) line above. The budget uses two different words for two payments to the same activity: a cost-reimbursement of 40,500.0 millió Ft and a compensation of 277,000.0 millió Ft. In the public-service-obligation framework, the "compensation" is the payment to the bus operator for running services on routes and at frequencies that the operator would not run on fare revenue alone — the loss-making rural and inter-settlement routes that a public-service-obligation mandate requires. This is the largest single subsidy in the bus network, and it is, in mechanism, a combination of two things: a genuine support for transport access in thin-demand areas, and the loss-funding of a state-owned bus operator whose cost base is not tested by competition. The classification is Phase-Out, and the reform is not the abandonment of rural transport access but the replacement of an untested, operator-level compensation with a tendered, route-level mechanism. Where a rural route genuinely needs to be supported, the support should be put out to competitive tender — the public-service obligation specified, and operators bidding for the lowest subsidy to run it — so that the compensation pays the competitively-established cost of providing the access rather than the reported loss of a single state operator. This is the standard public-service-obligation tendering model, and it separates the legitimate question (which thin-demand routes does the public want supported) from the soft-budget question (is the operator's cost base efficient). The six-year horizon allows the route network to be specified, the public-service obligations defined, and the tendering rounds run, with current services continuing throughout.
Transition mechanism
Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide. The protected party is the residents of thin-demand areas who rely on the supported routes, and the orderly continuity of service during the transition. Year 1 holds the line while the supported route network is specified and the public-service obligations defined; Years 2-6 competitively tender the route-level public-service obligations in rounds, replacing operator-level loss-compensation with route-level tendered subsidy. The "full saving" of 277,000.0 millió Ft is the elimination of the untested operator-compensation envelope; the competitively-tendered cost of genuinely supporting thin-demand routes reappears as a smaller budgeted line, and the net improvement is the recovered soft-budget margin. Net saving — the recovered margin — rises from 46,166.7 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full envelope in Year 6, with the tendered route-support cost rebudgeted explicitly.
Affected groups
Residents of thin-demand rural and inter-settlement areas who rely on supported bus routes — protected by the continuation of service through the transition and by the route-level tendered support that follows. The state-owned bus operator, whose loss-compensation is replaced by competitively-won route contracts and which must compete on cost. Taxpayers, who fund the tendered cost of route support rather than an operator's reported loss.
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