NATIONAL NEWS - The organisation undoing tax abuse (Outa) has proposed several alternatives to e-tolls including turning to national treasury and a fuel levy increase to fund the highway improvement project.
Outa said it was willing to work with the government to find appropriate solutions to end the e-toll impasse.
“Early in the saga, Outa suggested that the bonds for the Gauteng freeway improvement project (GFIP) should be funded in the same way that Sanral funds over 18 000km of its non-tolled network,” Outa said in a statement.
“[Namely], through allocations from Treasury and if needed, via a ring-fenced fuel levy increase of 10c per liter which had to implemented when e-tolls were launched.”
It believed that had this been done from the start, the capital cost of the project would already have been raised.
“However, government’s determination to legitimise a grossly ineffective and irrational scheme has resulted in billions of rand in debt for Sanral.”
Outa suggested four solutions to e-tolls:
– Renegotiate the debt with the PIC.
– End the collections contract with Electronic Toll Collections (ETC), as this was a massive and unnecessary cost.
– Reassess the budget to include allocations by national treasury towards the debt, including a possible allocation from the fuel levy.
– Outa believes that Sanral may be owed more from the profits of three main toll concessionaires on long-distance tolled routes. It urged treasury to investigate these contracts and reclaim funds owed.
“Government needs to engage with civil society if it wants to do what is in the best interest of its citizens,” said Outa CEO, Wayne Duvenage.
“The main reason this scheme has failed is due to the lack of trust citizens have in our government on the e-toll decision.
“The public are fully aware that this infrastructure must ultimately be paid for by society, but we are not willing to pay for grossly inefficient systems that have extremely high administrative costs and which are being used to fund collusion that leads to excessive road construction costs.”
