Sanral 'encouraged' by e-toll payments
But Outa points out that less than two percent of discounted 'historic' debt has been cleared, with only a month to go.
|||Pretoria - South African National Roads Agency Limited spokesman Vusi Mona says he's encouraged by an upward trend in the number of motorists taking advantage of the agency's once-off 60 percent discount on e-toll debt incurred up to 31 August 2015.
The discount offer, announced by deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa on 20 May 2015, will expire on 2 May 2016.
Mona said on Tuesday road users were paying R80 million to R90 million a month during 2016, compared to an average of about R60 million a month around August/September 2015.
Monthly e-toll payments in fact averaged R65 million a month during the first six months of 2015, and varied from a low of R59 million to a high of R82 million in the seven months from July 2015 to January 2016.
Sanral's best month so far has been June 2014, when it reported payments of R120 million - a little less than half its original base target of R260 million a month.
Which is why Sanral was now issuing summonses to serial defaulters, Mona said, since Moody's had made it plain that “an inability to enforce e-toll payments, leading to deteriorating cash flows and increased borrowing needs, would apply downward rating pressure.
“If you're registered - you don't have to have a tag - the monthly fees for a light motor vehicle are capped at R236,” he said.
According to a Sanral estimate, three out of four car drivers will pay less than R100 a month and one in three will pay less than R25 a month - provided they're registered and they pay within 30 days of going under the gantry.
However, Wayne Duvenage, chairman of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, noted with amusement that of the (discounted) ringfenced total of R5.9 billion accrued by road users between the inception of e-tolls in December 2013 and 31 August 2015, Sanral had collected less than R100 million (about 1.5 percent) in the first five months of the discount offer.
To suggest that e-toll collections of between R80 million and R90 million a month in February and March 2016 represented a growth of any substance was a feeble attempt at claiming success where there was none, he said.
'SELF-INFLICTED'
Duvenage also dismissed Sanral's claim that opponents of e-tolling were responsible for the agency's current financial problems and credit rating pressures.
“Sanral's financial predicament is self-inflicted,” he said. “It cannot run roughshod over the public with meaningless engagement programs and excessive collection contracts for an ill-conceived scheme to service the debt of an overpriced freeway upgrade, and expect us to fall for their nonsense.”