YANGON — A French-Myanmar joint venture has won an exclusive 20-year contract to sell advertising on street furniture in the commercial capital Yangon, including the installation of 500 hi-tech bus stops.
FMIDecaux—a joint venture between First Myanmar Investment Company (FMI) and JCDecaux, a worldwide outdoor advertising company based in France—signed the contract with the Yangon City Development Committee on Saturday.
JCDecaux is also a partner in a flyover art project involving the reconfiguring and redesigning of six flyovers in Yangon.
In a press release Monday, JCDecaux announced that under the new contract, the joint venture will design and install 500 new bus stops featuring advertising displays and city information panels (CIPs). The bus stops will be equipped with USB ports. LED screens on the roof will show buses’ estimated time of arrival. Each of the 500 CIPs will comprise one advertising panel and one panel reserved for displaying official city information, according to a press release issued on Monday.
Some CIPs will be equipped with battery recycling receptacles and drinking fountains, it said.
The YCDC estimated that 300 existing bus stops will be replaced with new ones within 18 months from June, starting with those on the main bus routes such as Pyay and Kabar Aye Pagoda roads. All 500 new bus stops will be finished in three years.
The request for tenders for the project was made on Jan. 3, 2017. About five companies tendered bids. FMIDecaux’s winning bid proposes total investment of US$13 million in the project, including operation and maintenance of new bus stops and CIPs.
FMI Company official U Tun Tun told local media at the contract-signing ceremony that 3 to 15 percent of the profit from advertising sales will go to the government.
“We would like to upgrade the bus stops in Yangon to the level of other ‘smart’ cities in accordance with international standards. But the 500 new bus stops will not be enough; Yangon has over 2,000 bus stops,” Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein said at the ceremony.
Upgrading bus stops is part of the Yangon regional government’s plan to improve public transportation.
The chief minister said the remaining existing bus stops would be upgraded by the YCDC.
