Right step to sort out e-toll debt mess

After years and years of finger-pointing, denials and U-turns, isn’t it wonderful to hear government officials finally coming up with a plan to sort out the e-toll debt mess? Well, sort of…

Gauteng MEC for finance and economic development Lebogang Maile told Moneyweb last week the provincial government will pay its 30% portion of Sanral’s Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) debt and interest obligations – R12.9 billion and an additional R4.1 billion owed to Sanral for the GFIP maintenance backlog over a period of four years.

They are at an advanced stage of obtaining a loan for the R4.1 billion “so we can deal with the maintenance now”.

“We will raise money to invest in infrastructure because we want to see long-term benefits. We want to raise money to finance the economy, not to finance debt,” Maile said.

ALSO READ: Gauteng to use new revenue strategy to tackle R17 billion Sanral debt

However, he stopped short of how they would generate this revenue, but revealed details about this strategy will only be released later because “we are [still] busy with it”.

He said: “We don’t want to pre-empt [this]. We are confident that we will be able to raise all that money. I can assure you it’s not going to bankrupt us. We have got a budget so we will make sure that we find the money. It’s going to come from our infrastructure budget.”

It’s a step in the right direction… we hope.