{"id":350579,"date":"2019-11-01T08:58:28","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T06:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=350579"},"modified":"2019-11-01T08:58:28","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T06:58:28","slug":"government-flip-flops-on-the-future-of-e-tolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/350579\/government-flip-flops-on-the-future-of-e-tolls\/","title":{"rendered":"Government flip-flops on the future of e-tolls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cabinet has not made an official decision on the future of e-tolls, says Transport minister Fikile Mbalula.<\/p>\n<p>Addressing <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EsethuOnDuty\/status\/1189941121113317376\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">media<\/a> <\/strong>on Thursday (31 October), Mbalula said that his department tabled a number of proposals regarding the controversial toll scheme, with cabinet set to debate these possibilities later in November.<\/p>\n<p>He said that these proposals would form a &#8216;reconfigured approach&#8217; following disagreements between the national government, the department of transport, and Gauteng government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are not only looking at extending the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP), (but) are also looking at the &#8216;scrapping&#8217; of e-tolls,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The preferred option will take into consideration the interest of society, the indigent and road users as well as the state of the economy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, Mbalula acknowledged that the country has previous bond and debt commitments which meant that it was difficult to move away from the &#8216;user pays&#8217; model.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mixed messages<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, finance minister Tito Mboweni said that the controversial e-toll system is here to stay.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in his medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS), Mboweni said that after considering a number of issues it was decided that government would remain committed to a \u2018user-pay\u2019 model.<\/p>\n<p>However, he said that there will be a further dispensation and value-added services under the new system and that compliance will also be strengthened.<\/p>\n<p>The MTBPS shows that since 2014\/15, the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Saral ) has incurred annual average losses of R1 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe agency is not generating sufficient cash from its toll portfolio to settle operational costs and debt redemptions falling due over the next three years,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n<p>Government has extended a total guarantee facility of R38.9 billion to the agency, of which R30.3 billion had been used by 31 March 2019.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/350145\/e-tolls-are-here-to-stay-mboweni\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">E-tolls are here to stay: Mboweni<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cabinet has not made an official decision on the future of e-tolls, says Transport minister Fikile Mbalula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":70473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11119],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-350579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motoring","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350579","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=350579"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350629,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350579\/revisions\/350629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}