{"id":261173,"date":"2018-07-26T13:03:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T11:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=261173"},"modified":"2018-07-26T13:03:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T11:03:33","slug":"south-africas-roads-are-falling-apart-and-r35-billion-doesnt-even-come-close-to-fixing-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/261173\/south-africas-roads-are-falling-apart-and-r35-billion-doesnt-even-come-close-to-fixing-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s roads are falling apart – and R35 billion doesn’t even come close to fixing the problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transport minister Blade Nzimande says that the Department of Transport is continuously engaging with National Treasury on its need to increase the budget allocation for roads maintenance.<\/p>\n

This follows a recent\u00a0parliamentary Q&A session<\/a><\/strong> where\u00a0COPE’s Willie Madisha\u00a0questioned the amount of money needed to improve the country’s infrastructure over the coming years, and what to expect from\u00a0road infrastructure in the future.<\/p>\n

In response, Nzimande said that\u00a0there had been an increase in the budgets for national roads, citing a Sanral graph which shows that spending is set to rise as high as R20 billion by 2020\/2021.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However Nzimande noted that there was difference between national and provincial road maintenance.<\/p>\n

“In the case of provincial road maintenance, which are funded from their provincial budget allocations, the department shall continue to assist provinces through the Provincial Roads Maintenance Grant (PRMG), with an a estimated budget allocation of R35 billion over the current Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF),” he said.<\/p>\n

According to Nzimande, the PRMG accounts for roughly half of provincial road maintenance expenditure, with the funds mostly used for routine and periodic maintenance needs.<\/p>\n

“Hence, very limited resources are available to rehabilitate the provincial paved road network unless the PRMG is significantly grown over the medium to long term or provinces allocate a much larger portion of own funds to road maintenance \u2013 ideally a combination of both measures,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The magnitude of maintenance backlogs due to lack of funding is such that it is unlikely to be addressed through national transfers and subsidies, especially given the National Treasury\u2019s commitment to fiscal consolidation, which in the continued absence of notable economic growth must be predominantly realised through higher allocations from the provincial treasuries and\/or from savings and efficiencies in respective provincial departmental expenditure<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

He added that where the emphasis\u00a0in the earlier years was more on the existence of infrastructure, at present the emphasis is on ‘network availability’ and ‘redundancy’ predominantly.<\/p>\n

“This requires a different asset management approach. Therefore, road authorities need to revisit their maintenance strategies by looking at the relationship between infrastructure and mobility, so that the range of optional interventions can be broadened, to extend the lifetime of road assets,” he said.<\/p>\n

Financial support to provinces<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Province<\/th>\n2018\/2019 allocations (R’000)<\/th>\n2019\/2020 allocations (R’000)<\/th>\n2020\/2021 allocations (R’000)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Eastern Cape<\/td>\n1 439 241<\/td>\n1 391 054<\/td>\n1 467 354<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Free State<\/td>\n1 299 602<\/td>\n1 235 577<\/td>\n1 303 349<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gauteng<\/td>\n742 521<\/td>\n636 028<\/td>\n670 914<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
KZN<\/td>\n1 826 745<\/td>\n1 772 792<\/td>\n1 870 031<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Limpopo<\/td>\n1 124 146<\/td>\n1 105 360<\/td>\n1 165 989<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mpumalanga<\/td>\n1 523 757<\/td>\n1 416 386<\/td>\n1 494 075<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Northern Cape<\/td>\n1 111 637<\/td>\n1 050 720<\/td>\n1 108 353<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
North West<\/td>\n960 604<\/td>\n904 230<\/td>\n953 827<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Western Cape<\/td>\n1 007 414<\/td>\n911 213<\/td>\n961 194<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Unallocated<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n1 058 305<\/td>\n1 117 570<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/strong><\/td>\n11 035 668<\/strong><\/td>\n11 481 665<\/strong><\/td>\n12 112 657<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Read:\u00a0Here is the expected petrol price for August<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s road maintenance backlogs are so huge, due to lack of funding, that it’s unlikely national transfers and subsidies will solve the problem, says Transport minister Blade Nzimande.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":98443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-261173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261173"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261247,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261173\/revisions\/261247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}