The South African National Road Agency (Sanral) met before Parliament’s Transport Committee on Wednesday to outline its plan for the next three years.

After battling to recover e-toll fees since the tolls were implemented across Gauteng’s freeway network, the agency said it could soon be faced with serious cash flow problems if a substantial amount of outstanding fees is not paid soon.

Sanral’s CEO, Skhumbuzo Macozoma told committee members that the outstanding e-toll fees in Gauteng could affect the company’s credit rating standing.

He noted that South Africa’s recent sovereign credit-rating downgrade affected all state entities, and added that Sanral had to postpone its bond issues for March and April.

“It looks like we are likely to postpone the current one and we will look to see what happens next month,” he said. “We hope the situation will improve, otherwise, Sanral is going to find itself in a very difficult cash flow position.”

Future projects stalled

Macozoma said future tolling projects worth more than a R100 billion have been stalled due to poor collections. He also explained that the low collection of e-toll fees has resulted in the postponement of certain capital projects on the toll portfolio.

He said Sanral had approximately R128 billion worth of projects that were earmarked for implementation to improve the toll mechanism, however that this had also been affected, and that progress would not be made here due to economic uncertainty.