Johannesburg - A private transport company has an outstanding e-toll bill of in excess of R20 million for its vehicles using the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project between December 2013 up until end-August this year.
Mark Ridgway, the chief operations officer of Electronic Tolling Company, said on Wednesday this was the largest debt built up on the GFIP e-toll system.
“It is a really big player in the transport industry and is running hundreds of vehicles on a daily and monthly basis,” he said.
Ridgway added that there were a number of companies listed on the JSE that had not disclosed their e-toll debt to their shareholders.
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Jamie Surkont, the chief executive of ETC, said its responsibility was to collect the debt and there was a contactable base, which was typically commercially orientated, that owed a significant amount of money.
Surkont said the consequences of the GFIP e-toll system failing was that the government would have to bail out the project, which could have an impact on the country’s sovereign credit ratings and stunt the future development of roads.
Ridgway said a total of R5.9 billion in e-tolls was outstanding at the 60 percent discounted rate in terms of the new dispensation, and the ETC would be trying to collect this amount between now and the discount cut-off date of 2 May 2016.
“The historical debt up to 31 August is ring-fenced and there is a window of opportunity. But if you don’t pay within six months, you lose the 60 percent discount on the historical outstanding debt.”
TACTICAL APPROACH
Ridgway said 81 percent of the total discounted debt of R5.9 billion was owed by 17 percent or 518 000 account holders.
He said ETC had established a task force to collect the outstanding debt of the ring-fenced debt up to 31 August and brought in some experts to help them with the tactical approach.
But he stressed the ultimate strategy and tools it would use to collect the outstanding debt would be determined by the South African National Roads Agency Limited.
Ridgway added it was uncertain whether ETC would be able to use a block on the renewal of a vehicle’s licence because of unpaid e-toll bills.
He said the top 20 000 accounts with e-toll fees outstanding had an average balance of R78 000 or spent an average of R3715 a month.
Ridgway said these account holders included big fleets and commercial operations but this segment represented about 22 percent of the total discounted R5.9 billion debt value. “That is a very workable number in terms of collecting debt,” he said.
Ridgway said that based on the invoice value, the average amount owing on the 3.34 million account holders was R1875 after the 60 percent discount, which meant the average monthly expenditure on e-tolls after the discount was R89.27.
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