A bus a day from Samdrup-Jongkhar to Trashigang: social costs of privatisation in Bhutan

A pervasive wave of privatisation of public utilities is currently sweeping the world including the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan. This paper is an attempt to highlight the inherent conflict between objectives of public policy and interests of private business in specific context of the bus transport sector in Bhutan. It also underlines some very real possibilities of private monopoly formation and consequent high social costs of privatisation in a country of limited entrepreneurial resources. The paper proposes an alternative policy action within the framework of privatisation to resolve the aforementioned conflict and to reduce the aforementioned costs.