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Johannesburg - Only 17 cents of every rand collected through e-tolling in Gauteng goes towards the cost of managing the operations and collecting tolls, Sanral said on Thursday.
"The 17 cents covers all the costs associated with collecting tolls, including salaries, bank transaction costs, toll infrastructure maintenance costs, telecommunications costs, postage costs, [and] municipal rates and taxes, incurred by ETC, the South African firm appointed... to manage e-tolling," spokesperson Vusi Mona said in a statement.
"The remaining 83 cents goes to a variety of needs linked to the road, including servicing the loan incurred in order to complete the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP)."
In addition to this there were other costs related to the "violation process", he said.
Mona denied reports that the money would go to Kapsch, a Swedish-based company which has majority shareholding in the electronic collection joint venture that won the multibillion-rand contract to build and operate e-tolling.
He said all the money paid by road users would go into a SA National Roads Agency Limited account and Sanral had an ad-measure account with ETC.
"Having an ad-measure contract means that ETC is paid for services on a monthly basis and the payment is strictly according to a bill of quantities as specified in the tender contract," Mona said.
Only dividends declared could be paid to the foreign companies involved, after tax was paid in South Africa.
"The argument that money will go overseas is therefore simplistic and misinformed.
"If we add the normal internal administrative costs, payment to service providers, plus salaries, then you would understand that if ETC declare a profit -- if it makes one -- only at that stage does it send it to its foreign partners," Mona added.
