South Africa\u2019s National Roads Agency expects to be able to access a R7 billion ($398 million) loan from the New Development Bank soon and plans to use the money to upgrade key transportation routes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe state law adviser must give a legal opinion that it\u2019s all sound; we expect that to come within the next two weeks,\u201d Reginald Demana, the agency\u2019s chief executive officer, said at the signing of the loan agreement in Johannesburg on Tuesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finalisation is also contingent on foreign-exchange approvals from the South African Reserve Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sanral announced on Monday that it had concluded the accord with the bank, which the BRICS bloc of nations established in 2015 to fund infrastructure and sustainable-development projects in member countries and other emerging economies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The agency will use the loan to fund the upgrade of four freeways at a cost of 12.7 billion rand as well as other projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The road agency failed to secure government backing for a guarantee for a loan from the lender in 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, the National Treasury raised concerns about historic debt related to a road-tolling system that was instituted to fund freeways in the central Gauteng province. The government officially scrapped the system last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the resolution of the tolling matter, the state approved a 16.5 billion-rand debt cap for Sanral, the agency said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe still need to go to the market to raise additional funding,\u201d primarily from domestic institutions, bond investors, banks and other development-finance institutions, Demana said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe NDB might also be interested to look at more rand funding as part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s National Roads Agency expects to be able to access a R7 billion loan from the New Development Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":832627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2091,429,853,23204],"class_list":["post-832623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brics","tag-sanral","tag-south-africa","tag-the-new-development-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832623","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832628,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832623\/revisions\/832628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}