The Minister of Transport and Communications, Mateus Magala, said today that the Government is "provisionally compensating" the operators of public transport of passengers, aiming to reimburse the costs derived from the increase in fuel prices.

"We are compensating provisionally, until December, for the costs it incurs by not increasing the price to the passenger," said Magala quoted by Lusa.

The governor was speaking in the Assembly of the Republic in the session of questions posed by deputies from the three benches.

The monetary transfers that the executive is channeling to the operators will last as long as the mechanism of direct subsidy payments to passengers is not implemented, he advanced.

Compensation to carriers, he continued, was the formula the government found to stem pressures for an increase in the travel fare.

"We managed to appeal to the citizenship of the carriers to agree not to increase the fare, because our population has to be helped," in a difficult context, he stressed.

The Minister of Transport and Communications did not give the amount of money the government is disbursing for compensation to transporters and the number and type of beneficiaries, since the sector is largely run by informal operators in the country's cities.