Johannesburg - Every second motorist on Gauteng’s e-tolled freeways (GFIP) has an e-toll account and nearly R1 billion has been paid – but it’s only about a third of what the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) expected to get.
Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters told Parliament this week: “As at September 30, 2014, there are 1 254 502 active accounts registered on the system and approximately 2.5 million users of GFIP per month.” She said 93 292 e-toll accounts were deactivated.
Peters was responding to a question from Freedom Front Plus MP Anton Alberts.
Motorists had paid R995 million in e-tolls in the first 10 months since it was commissioned – from December 3 last year to September 30, Peters said. This is the amount that has been received and not the amount billed.
But this is far short of what Sanral budgeted for.
During the Constitutional Court fight over the legality of e-tolls, the National Treasury referred to Sanral’s expectation of an e-toll income of R270m a month. Over 10 months, that would amount to R2.7bn.
But the R995m collected is about 37 percent of that.
Peters included a monthly breakdown.
DROPPING SHARPLY
The e-toll revenue was highest in April to July, then dropped sharply in August and again in September.
The revenue figures look even worse when compared to numbers that Peters had previously provided to Parliament. The figures provided this week show that e-toll revenue for December last year, January and February totalled R228m – less than what Sanral expected to get in a month.
But in April, the minister said in response to questions from the DA that an unpaid amount of R544m due on e-tolls was sent to the violations processing centre (VPC) for collection, that this was 9.21 percent of the value of the transactions on the system and that R50m of that had been paid.
Sanral spent R55m towards collecting the debt.
The unpaid amount of R544m was billed over the same three months that Peters this week said generated a final income of R228m.
Presumably, some of the payments for that period were paid without being handed over to the VPC, so that indicates a substantial failure to collect. Furthermore, if the unpaid R544m was 9.21 percent of the transactions, that puts the transactions for the three months at about R5.9bn.
This would indicate that Sanral ultimately collected R228m of the R5.9bn in transactions for those first three months, which is a rate of less than 4 percent.
The low collection rate is despite the fact that half the number of motorists using the GFIP roads have registered.
However, those needing e-toll exemptions – such as police, emergency services, taxis and buses – must also be registered to get the exemption, which may explain the low payment rate.
The Star