{"id":50897,"date":"2013-12-13T00:05:06","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T22:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=50897"},"modified":"2013-12-13T08:43:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-13T06:43:30","slug":"e-tolls-will-kill-people-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/50897\/e-tolls-will-kill-people-economist\/","title":{"rendered":"E-tolls will kill people: economist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist Mike Sch\u00fcssler<\/a> has warned that heavily indebted consumers who go against getting an e-tag might end up in a ‘debt trap’ as the bills start to pile up.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00fcssler, an economist at Economists.co.za was speaking to\u00a0Moneyweb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the controversial Gauteng e-toll system went live on 3 December, conflicting reports have have surfaced regarding the number of people who have bought an e-tag which enables a substantial fare reduction, and a cap at R450 per month.<\/p>\n

According to the latest figures released by Sanral<\/a>, Gauteng road users have purchased 890,388 e-tags, to date \u2013 almost 40% of the 2.3 million monthly road users in the province.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance<\/a>\u00a0(Outa) said it had\u00a0conducted\u00a0its own research, finding\u00a0that the true penetration figure to be as low as 350,000, or\u00a015% of Gauteng’s road users.<\/p>\n

Sanral quickly moved to dismiss Outa’s claims.<\/p>\n

Tembakazi Mnyaka, chairman of SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral), recently said that\u00a0road users will be \u201chugely\u201d surprised by the \u201crelatively insignificant\u201d effect e-tolling will have on their pockets.<\/p>\n

“There is also a cap of R450 a month and it has been calculated that less than 1% of road users will pay that sum. Almost 83% of all road users will have to pay less than R100,\u201d\u00a0Mnayka said.<\/p>\n

However, the numbers released by both Sanral and Outa suggest that many\u00a0motorists\u00a0have yet to get an e-tag, with the majority seemingly in protest against a\u00a0system\u00a0they feel to be unjust.<\/p>\n

Sch\u00fcssler told Moneyweb that indebted consumers were not in any position to absorb the cost of e-tolls, especially those who are not tagged.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are going to kill the South African economy if the costs are not capped and people have to pay more than five times the discounted tariffs. It will kill people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The economist said that motorists would have to sacrifice a large portion of their disposable income.<\/p>\n

“That will slow down spending in stores and also delay bigger purchases that drive economic growth,” Moneyweb quoted\u00a0Sch\u00fcssler as saying.<\/p>\n

“If they don\u2019t bend to the South African National Roads Agency\u2019s (Sanral) will, they might land in an e-toll debt trap that will be hard to get out of – because, for most motorists, e-tolls is a recurring cost and their situation will worsen every day as they travel to work to earn a living,” Moneyweb said.<\/p>\n

A survey by the\u00a0Institute of Race Relations<\/a>, in\u00a0January, showed that\u00a0Gauteng has the highest consumer debt per capita of all nine provinces and accounts for almost half of total consumer debt held in SA.<\/p>\n

Nomsa Motshegare<\/a>, CEO of the\u00a0National Credit Regulator<\/a>,\u00a0has warned against the reckless spending over the festive season after statistics published by the credit bureau for the quarter ended September 2013 indicate that consumers are drowning in debt.<\/p>\n

More on etolls<\/h3>\n

Sanral stands by e-tag sales figures<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA\u2019s most indebted province<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

E-tolls will force SA middle class into poverty<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

E-tolls are cheap for users: Sanral<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

South Africans short sighted on e-tolls: economist<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economist Mike Sch\u00fcssler, has warned that heavily indebted consumers who go against getting an e-tag might end up in a ‘debt trap’ as the bills start to pile up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":50901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7202,3826,26,7203,4109,1988,429],"class_list":["post-50897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-economists-co-za","tag-etolls","tag-headline","tag-institute-of-race-relations","tag-mike-schussler","tag-outa","tag-sanral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897","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=50897"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50924,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50897\/revisions\/50924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}