Sanral inflates number of E-tag sales – Outa
Outa says, now that E-toll has started, they have conducted a number of physical E-tag counts on vehicles.
Wayne Duvenage, chairman of Outa, says that the results give a clear indication that Sanral has once again fabricated their E-tag sales to more than double what they are.
“Based on a statistically sound sample size, research shows that only 15 per cent of freeway users are tagged and nine per cent of vehicles counted off the freeway were tagged.
“Obviously, it is the freeway user count that matters in this exercise, but the off-freeway count helps to corroborate our findings,” says Duvenage.
He adds that one would expect the non-freeway tag rate to be lower as there will be around 33 per cent of vehicles in Gauteng that do not touch the freeways.
“Extrapolating these percentages to the total number of unique vehicles using the Gauteng freeways per month, we calculate a maximum number of E-tags in use to be around 350 000.
“Even if one pushed the E-tag penetration rate to 20 per cent, the number of E-tags in use will be no more than 450 000, which is around half the number of tag sales recently announced by Sanral.”
Duvenage says at this rate the negative outlook on Sanral’s credit rating is very justified as it would appear that Sanral is facing serious problems in collecting the required revenues.
According to him even if a similar percentage of non-tagged users paid their E-toll bills at the standard rate, Sanral will not be able to raise more than R110-m per month, which is below half their target.
Vusi Mona, spokesperson for Sanral, says that the E-tag sales figures they have released are accurate.
“As a State-owned entity, everything we do is subject to audit processes by both the Auditor-General and our external auditors.
“We have no reason to ‘fabricate’ these figures as Outa alleges.”
He adds that they are confident of meeting their debt obligations and the improved rating a few days after toll commencement, though still negative, is an indication of a modest step in the right direction.
“As for Outa’s research, unless the sources of the information are known and found to be sound, we will not attach much value to it.
“We don’t know what equipment has been used, with which technical specifications and standards it complies and where it has been installed.”
