This report from the M & G Business should be of interest, not because it reveals shocking manipulation of a flawed tender system but because of all the extraneous financial information it contains, which the Direct Democracy Forum summarise as follows:
A thought provoking look at some e-toll numbers taken from the article:
E-Toll Cost summary:
2010 estimated cost per Km for new high grade road
(allows for 5% pa average escalation over 4 years) R5.5M
2010 cost estimate for 185km new roads @ R5.5M/Km R1.1B
2010 cost estimate for 185km refurbishment, say R2.2B
2013 OUTA estimate (including e-toll costs), say R13.0B
Current cost guestimate (excl finance charges) say R20.6B
(an almost tenfold escalation over 2.2B)
Add finance charges over 20 years R20.0B
Total cost over 20 years R40.6B
Cost per year 2.03B
Recovered through e-tolls: 20y /y
Capital Costs (% of E-Tolls) 28% R20.6B R1.03B
Debt Service 29% R20.0B R1.0B
Total Capital Cost and
Debt service recovered
over 20 Years (% of E-Tolls) 57% R40.6B R2.03B
Road maintenance 15% R10.7B R535M
E-Toll Maintenance 17% 12.1B R605M
Sanral profit 11% 7.8B R390M
Total Cost over 20 Years R71.2B 3.56B
By Scrapping E-Tolls the taxpayer would save
Debt service charges R20.0B
E-Toll Maintenance 12.1B
Sanral profit 7.8B
in total R39.9B (56% saving)
which approximates R2B per year for 20 Years.
Total costs over 20 year without SANRAL, Etoll and Finance charges should be 31.3B. If you are to believe OUTA that figure should be no more R23.7B (R13B + R10.7B maintenance costs, but that includes e-toll costs). Who to believe? If OUTA are anywhere near correct, the R71.2B cost over 20 years represents a 200% hike over the OUTA R23.7B figure. That from E-Tolls, Finance charges and Sanrall. That’s a heck of a lot of taxpayer money that South Africa cannot afford.
E-tolls simply do not make any contributions that a properly run Fiscus cannot make and do not make any financial sense at all except to SANRAL and the Debt Financiers, and that’s if we can believe the numbers in the article. What we can see is bad enough but what if those numbers are somehow unreliable, as the Sanral experience suggests to us is possible?
The DDF believe they have a clearly superior form of taxation (TEAL), compared to the current methods, which will more than easily absorb the capital costs of the Gauteng and all other roads upgrades in the country, without breaking the bank, and save huge debt service charges, which can instead go toward lowering the costs of our roads development and maintenance and improving the lives of all South Africans.
Look at DDF policies and see for yourself what the DDF can do for you.
Support the DDF Follow the DDF on Twitter
The buck stops at the ballot box