New e-toll fee hikes gazetted
HARBINGER? MAY INDICATE ROAD TAX IS CONTINUING
Decision on Gauteng road tolls may be announced at Sona.
Despite an imminent government decision on the future of e-tolls, the department of transport has published revised e-toll tariffs for the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) that will be effective and payable from 1 March.
The government in December decided to delay a decision on the future of e-tolls on the GFIP until the first cabinet meeting this year, which takes place today.
Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) CEO Wayne Duvenage on Monday questioned why the department of transport would gazette all the tariff increases on e-tolls when the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) in December only extended the e-toll management contract awarded to Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) for three months up until the end of February this year.
“What does that mean? We have to assume that when you see tariff hikes in March that e-tolls are here to stay because if they were going to be cancelled, they wouldn’t put the tariffs up and waste people’s time reading a gazette,” Duvenage said. “That is what I will presume from a gazette like that.”
Duvenage anticipates a government announcement on the future of e-tolls either in President
Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address (Sona) tomorrow or in the budget speech later this month.
Sanral general manager of communications Vusi Mona said on Monday that Sanral publishes the annual toll tariff adjustments as approved by the minister of transport every year.
Mona stressed these adjustments are done in terms of the preceding 12 months’ consumer price index (CPI) and, as a result, are not tariff increases but adjustments for CPI.
He added that Sanral was not responsible for making policy decisions or decisions related to the continuation or scrapping of e-tolls.
“Sanral will implement any announcement once required to do so by the minister of transport,” he said.