Highway collusion mess and e-tolls

When asked why Sanral had not picked up the collusion or possible price inflation, he said the agency could not have foreseen “ethical and leadership failures” in the firms concerned. “On how we could have missed this, we are engineers, not competition authorities.
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That is simply not acceptable: SANRAL cannot claim that SANRAL did not know that pricing was being artificially inflated, it is SANRAL's responsibility to do its own estimation of the cost associated with any work going out to tender and then reject all tenders that are clearly inflated, SANRAL failed to do that and it suggests that there was collusion and corruption from the top of SANRAL all the way down, especially if 3 of 6 projects were artificially inflated as it would have been extremely obvious that 50% of the tenders were being rigged.

“Sanral has zero tolerance for those who work for us and we make sure that those who bid with us know that.”
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Disingenuous codswallop.
 
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surely if your business is to build and maintain roads, you would know the costs associated with that!!
to now say that you could not have known is a blatant lie, as the GFIP is not the first and only project for SANRAL.

could it be that this is why the CEO wanted to resign?? was his resignation not around the time of the scandal with the construction companies??
 
Yet another corrupt South African institution. Are any of them honest? From Govt Departments demanding a kickback to get a tender awarded, to medical aid schemes deliberately withholding claim repayments, to SARS not refunding tax overpayments, council employees demanding a Christmas box or they might "forget" your street when it comes to bin collections...
 
Lies, lies, and more lies. In 2006 they estimated the cost for 359km of road at R6.3bn. In 2008, the estimated cost for just 185km had increased to R14.3bn. We subsequently know that this has increased substantially yet again. For them to say that they were unaware of costs is just a lie - they were monitoring it throughout the process, they simply didn't perform any of the requisite fiduciary and oversight duties required of them, or they were working together with the construction companies to inflate the prices.

Also remember that these prices do not include the cost of capital. I have been looking over their books and their existing bond issuances, and I calculate their total debt obligation as of 2013 at R41bn, not R36bn as per their financial statements unless they have been repaying even more of their principle debt without revenue - somehow - by magic...
 
of course SANRAL wont pass on any recovery to road users and the recovery wont cover the financing costs - because the construction companies didn't tell SANRAL to take on expensive credit
 
Maybe the amount is only R36bn because they received R5bn from the minister of finance
 
How's about these for some shocking statistics that I calculated. This looks at toll cost vs salary for phase 1 (which is now complete) and phase 2 (if we pay for e-tolls and let them continue). Lowest payment bracket is Nazir Ali's stated R100 per month (and required increases to pay their debt), and average payment is the weighted average payments made by all road users (and required increases to pay their debt). GFIP phase 2 kicks in in 2016...

Toll_vs_Salary_240kpa.png

Toll_vs_Salary_120kpa.png
 
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DJ do you have a decent map of phase 2?
I am constantly getting confused (and conflicting information) on what is in phase 1 and in phase 2
 
Yes, I do. I have Sanral's roadshow presentation when they were pitching for funding to potential creditors. Will post it shortly.

EDIT: Here's the screenshot...

Sanral_map_of_GFIP.png
 
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thanks because their website is surprisingly light on hard data on GFIP compared to other projects
 
Paul Hjul said:
thanks because their website is surprisingly light on hard data on GFIP compared to other projects
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It's on the NRA website iirc. But they have hidden it all over the show. You cannot get to it via links from their site - only specific Google searches of their site...
 
Basically their plan is for every single freeway to be tolled, and for it to be impossible to move between areas without being tolled. So quite clearly this is not a congestion-related project at all. It is a revenue-generator...
 
what I am particularly interested in is when the M1 Jhb is on the tolled list

if congestion was the idea then Rivonia Rd would have been tolled
 
Paul Hjul said:
what I am particularly interested in is when the M1 Jhb is on the tolled list

if congestion was the idea then Rivonia Rd would have been tolled
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If this was really about congestion, then only certain parts of the freeways would have been tolled. The congestion excuse was only used because they refused to fund maintenance from the fiscus or maintenance fund as was required of them.

As is evident from phase 3, the intention was to link all major metropolitan areas with new roads. This in itself would have been fantastic and would have sorted out the congestion issue to begin with, without the need for additional lanes on existing freeways. I get the impression that phase 3 was never intended to go ahead...
 
DJ... said:
If this was really about congestion, then only certain parts of the freeways would have been tolled. The congestion excuse was only used because they refused to fund maintenance from the fiscus or maintenance fund as was required of them.

As is evident from phase 3, the intention was to link all major metropolitan areas with new roads. This in itself would have been fantastic and would have sorted out the congestion issue to begin with, without the need for additional lanes on existing freeways. I get the impression that phase 3 was never intended to go ahead...
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congestion charging also ought to work on a presence of vehicle in a congested area over a period of time basis rather than a flow of traffic which is what the gantries do. Congestion is also poorly served by pushing people off bypasses (tolling the western bypass :blink:) forming a middle ring road.

My guess is that phase 3 was drawn up by a different pool of people to the proponents of etolling.
 
DJ... said:
...as of 2013 at R41bn, not R36bn as per their financial statements unless they have been repaying even more of their principle debt without revenue - somehow - by magic...
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Just something that came to mind when I read this, was there not something in the budget or somewhere where the government contributed/paid R5bn towards SANRAL for one or other reason. I'm sure I remember Pravin saying something like this, think in his budget speech....

Or I have already had to much wine today.....

Edit: Sorry, see it has been mentioned, should maybe read allllll theeee wayyyy....
 
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