Sanral takes R1.9bn to plug e-toll hole
Antoine e Slabbert
Sanral is taking large amounts of money from its non-toll portfolio (87% of the roads under its management) to plug the hole left by Gauteng road users who refuse to pay their e-tolls.
According to information in its integrated report, Sanral transferred R1.9 billion from its nontoll portfolio to the toll portfolio in the year ended March 2018.
This could escalate to R5.75 billion in the current financial year in terms of approval obtained from Treasury. This transfer would only be enough to support Sanral’s liquidity needs up to July 2019, the report states.
The amount is significant and roughly equals the amount Sanral spent in 2017-18 on the maintenance of its non-toll portfolio and only marginally less than the R6.2 billion spent on capital projects in its non-toll portfolio.
Thus the Gauteng e-toll project is gobbling up money meant for the building of new roads and maintenance of the existing 13 000km of non-toll roads under Sanral’s management.
Cash receipts on the Gauteng e-toll system amounted to R726 million during 2017-18. When e-tolls were first implemented in December 2013 Sanral hoped to collect R300 million per month.
According to the report, road users owed R10.8 billion in toll fees at the end of March, of which R9.8 billion had been outstanding for more than 91 days. That is a deterioration from the total of R8.7 billion a year before.
Sanral says it continues to pursue the outstanding debt, but considers debt older than three years, that owed by clients in business rescue or liquidation and amounts below R500 as unrecoverable.
The agency has government guarantees to the value of R37.9 billion. It further has treasury approval for a further R15 billion in unguaranteed debt.
Sanral has asked to increase the total guarantee to R43 billion and borrowing limit to R54 billion.
Moneyweb
Eight years ago debt counsellor Fanie Grove examined over 80 vehicle loans where clients had fallen into arrears and found in every case the bank had unlawfully overcharged interest.
In some cases, the overcharge was 40 to 50% more than the interest allowable in terms of the National Credit Act (NCA).
He said: “… if you extrapolate this, we are talking about potentially billions of rands in overcharges spanning back years.”
The matter was raised with the National Credit Regulator (NCR) in 2014 over a Standard Bank customer who missed some monthly payments in 2013.
The NCR took the view that the bank wasn’t violating the NCA and that it had calculated the interest correctly – despite the bank later reducing the loan amount.
However, an actuary who reconstructed