Johannesburg - The South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) will have a critical need within the next three months for R1.48 billion in additional funding because of financial challenges caused by delays in the implementation of e-tolling on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP).
Alex van Niekerk, Sanral’s toll and traffic manager for the northern region and GFIP project manager, confirmed yesterday that it was in talks with a number of banks to obtain this additional funding.
Van Niekerk said the sum of R1.48bn was the agency’s projection of its financing needs to cover the costs of servicing the debt, road maintenance and construction on the entire state-owned toll road portfolio “for the foreseeable future”.
However, he was unable to clarify what was meant by “the foreseeable future”, stressing that this was dependent on the e-tolling commencement date because that would obviously have an impact on Sanral’s financial position.
Sanral has been unable to raise capital from the bond market for more than a year because investors have been uncomfortable with the agency’s risk profile.
He confirmed that based on the most recent e-toll tariffs, Sanral was losing R200 million a month in revenue while e-tolling was not implemented.
Vusi Mona, Sanral’s communication manager, reiterated that Sanral was not bankrupt and its financial challenges related only to the state-owned toll road portfolio.
Mona said Sanral was the custodian of the national road network of 20 000km, of which only 9 percent, or 1 800km, comprised state-owned toll roads.
The balance of the country’s 3 120km in toll roads was funded and maintained by concessionaires on a build, operate and transfer basis.
Sanral’s non-toll road portfolio accounted for 84 percent of the total national road network, Mona noted, and these roads were funded by the National Treasury via the national Transport Department.
Van Niekerk said the financial challenges had not affected the maintenance of Sanral’s state-owned toll roads but admitted it had not issued tenders for some large capital projects because it did not have access to capital market funding. He added that similar to other infrastructure providers, Sanral was experiencing problems with vandalism and theft to the e-tolling system and related infrastructure, particularly the electrical supply infrastructure.
Van Niekerk said Sanral was paying monthly amounts in terms of the e-tolling tender to ensure the system was fully maintained and in a state of readiness but he was unable to specify this cost.
ETC, the service provider of the tolling services for the GFIP, was also paid about R25m a month in compensation to cover the cost of its overheads, including the monthly rental on kiosks, rates and taxes and maintenance.
Van Niekerk said Sanral had many planned projects, including the second phase of the GFIP that was very important to economic growth in Gauteng, and it was essential it had sufficient funding to implement all these projects.
He said the second phase of the project comprised about 150km of new freeways and, taking into consideration the cost of acquiring the land, would cost R100m or more for each kilometre that was built.
The GFIP’s second phase includes routes such as the PW9, which runs parallel to the Ben Schoeman highway; the PW14 linking the R21 to the N2 going into Johannesburg; and the N17 to the West Rand that links up with some of the freight routes. - Business Report
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