The South African government plans to allocate more than R5 billion to the Department of Transport to settle the debt accumulated by the country’s failed e-toll project.
As part of its last plenary sitting for 2024, the National Assembly passed the Special Appropriations Bill, allowing for money to be withdrawn from the National Revenue Fund (NRF) for state purposes.
The Bill has also been approved by the National Council of Provinces and is now sitting on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s desk to be assented to.
Citizens paying for e-tolls – One way or another
The Special Appropriations Bill was first tabled by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in parliament when he presented the 2024 medium-term budget speech to the National Assembly on 30 October.
The bill seeks to withdraw R5.12 billion from the NRF for two main reasons – to pay for South Africa’s ongoing International Court of Justice case against Israel, and to settle the national government’s portion of the debt racked up by the South African National Road Agency’s (Sanral’s) e-toll system in Gauteng.
E-tolls account for the vast majority of the funds prescribed in the Bill at just over R5 billion, as the various legal fees for the court case amount to a combined R95.5 million.
The tolling scheme’s debt has continued to mature over the last two years, as Sanral’s integrated report for the 2022/2023 period listed a figure of R22.2 billion.
By the end of the 2023/2024 period, this had grown to R28.937 billion, nearly all of which (R28.726 billion) is listed as “impaired”.
The national government and the Gauteng provincial government (GPG) previously agreed to a settlement where the former will assume responsibility for 70% of the e-toll debt, while the latter is put on the hook for the remaining 30%.
As of April 2024, the total debt was estimated at around R43 billion, meaning that the national government will need to pay for approximately R30 billion, while the GPG must contribute an additional R13 billion.
The R5 billion allocated to the Department of Transport by the Special Appropriations Bill will therefore be one of several contributions towards the R30-billion figure.
However, there has been a controversy regarding the sum owed by the GPG, which ballooned from R13 billion to R20 billion seemingly overnight.
The Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) flagged the discrepancy in the GPG’s report, demanding answers as to why the figure jumped by such a substantial amount.
Outa also contends that the GPG should not pay a single cent towards the failed tolling scheme, as the province did not come up with the idea, nor does it own the roads on which the gantries were erected.
Regardless of public outcry, the GPG made its first payment of R3.8 billion towards its portion of the debt in October 2024.
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