E-tolls could well be over, but who’ll pay Sanral’s debt? – Outa

While the battle against e-tolls continues, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) is wondering where Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will find the money to pay the multimillion-rand debt owed by South African National Roads Agency (Sanral).

It believed its suggestion 10 years ago of a fuel levy would have helped pay off the R20 billion debt.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura announced during his State of the Province address (Sopa) that the lasting solution was expected to come from President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Makhura said the executive council had made strong and persuasive arguments to national government on e-tolls.

“I have been assured by President Cyril Ramaphosa that a lasting solution has been found and an announcement by the president is imminent,” he said.

Outa chief executive Wayne Duvenage told The Citizen that, although he was optimistic that Mboweni would announce the end of e-tolls in his speech today, he was curious to know where the money would come from because the government was holding the information “tight to their chest”.

Referring to the Gauteng tolling system as a drive-now-pay-later system that would not work, he said the minister had the tough task of having to find another way to collect money.

Sanral’s R20 billion bond to build the roads had now risen to about R35 or R36 billion with interest.

Although it received money from Treasury and some money from e-toll payers, very little went to service the debt and, instead, went to Electronic Toll Collection to pay for the toll collection process.

Outa had suggested a fuel levy should be introduced to pay off Sanral’s debt. “We suggested 10 cents could be added to fuel. At the time, during 2010, it was about R1.10. They later increased it to R3.25 and there will probably be another increase today by 20 to 40 cents – and they may blame it on e-tolls which would be disingenuous.”

He said the truth was the money went to financing everything the department had to fund, instead of just e-tolls.

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