CIVIL action group Outa is celebrating a grand victory after finance minister Enoch Godongwana on Wednesday (26 October) sounded the death knell for the controversial Gauteng e-tolling system during his mid-term budget speech.
The minister brought the debates around the future of e-tolls to an end by announcing that the South African government, through National Treasury, would finance 70% of road agency Sanral’s outstanding debt on the project, with the remaining 30% coming out of the Gauteng provincial budget.
This amounts to a transfer of R23.736 billion from the national government to the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) to pay off government-guaranteed debt – conditional on a solution to phase 1 of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP).
E-toll debt is currently sitting at R47 billion.
While the minister did not say outright that e-tolling was over, a statement from Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi following the announcement made it clear that
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