{"id":357625,"date":"2019-11-28T14:14:20","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T12:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=357625"},"modified":"2019-11-28T14:14:20","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T12:14:20","slug":"why-government-cant-get-rid-of-e-tolls-yet-mboweni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/357625\/why-government-cant-get-rid-of-e-tolls-yet-mboweni\/","title":{"rendered":"Why government can&#8217;t get rid of e-tolls yet: Mboweni"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Finance minister Tito Mboweni says that Gauteng&#8217;s controversial e-toll system cannot be scrapped unless a replacement revenue source is found.<\/p>\n<p>Responding in a recent parliamentary Q&amp;A session, Mboweni said that financing the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) is done on a corporate finance basis and not a project finance basis.<\/p>\n<p>This means that borrowing for toll roads is done on the basis that there is a revenue stream to finance the debt, he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A significant portion of the South African National Roads Agency\u2019s existing debt was to finance the upgrade of roads on GFIP and it requires a revenue stream to finance it, so e-tolls cannot be abolished without a revenue stream to finance existing commitments.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>No decision<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In November, Transport minister Fikile Mbalula said that cabinet has not made an official <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/350579\/government-flip-flops-on-the-future-of-e-tolls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">decision<\/a> <\/strong>on the future of e-tolls.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2018reconfigured approach\u2019 following disagreements between the national government, the department of transport, and Gauteng government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not only looking at extending the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP), (but) are also looking at the \u2018scrapping\u2019 of e-tolls,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe preferred option will take into consideration the interest of society, the indigent and road users as well as the state of the economy.\u201d<\/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 \u2018user pays\u2019 model.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/motoring\/350579\/government-flip-flops-on-the-future-of-e-tolls\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Government flip-flops on the future of e-tolls<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finance minister Tito Mboweni says that Gauteng&#8217;s controversial e-toll system cannot be scrapped unless a replacement revenue source is found.<\/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-357625","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\/357625","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=357625"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357635,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357625\/revisions\/357635"}],"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=357625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}