{"id":48895,"date":"2012-04-30T09:13:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T07:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=48895"},"modified":"2012-04-30T09:16:51","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T07:16:51","slug":"e-tolls-debacle-bad-for-sas-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/48895-e-tolls-debacle-bad-for-sas-image.html","title":{"rendered":"E-tolls debacle &#8220;bad for SA&#8217;s image&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Government efforts to introduce e-tolling and a high court order stopping it have raised questions about the state&#8217;s ability or willingness to guarantee debt, Business Day reported on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Efficient Group economist Dawie Roodt said the country&#8217;s leadership appeared weak and confused, which could have an adverse impact on South Africa&#8217;s image as an investment destination.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People are prepared to pay for tolls, but with conditions. The real issue is we are losing face because clearly the politicians are not in charge here. It&#8217;s very bad for SA&#8217;s image,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Financial services group Nomura emerging market economist Peter Attard Montalto told the publication the struggle to implement e-tolling would create a precedent that undermined parastatal policy, and managing the problems would add costs to the fiscus.<\/p>\n<p>Montalto said state would have to use funds meant for other parastatals to bail out the <a title=\"South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL)\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/372008-SANRAL\">SA National Roads Agency Limited<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He said the problem was with the R20 billion debt incurred by improving Gauteng&#8217;s highways<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Consequently, if a payment is missed&#8230; the toll-side debt accelerates. Government would have to then pay around R19 billion to finance that side of Sanral&#8217;s balance sheet,&#8221; said Montalto.<\/p>\n<p>If the government had to guarantee the debt, &#8220;budget reserves would be fully consumed at the start of the fiscal year and add yet another risk to the deficit&#8221;, he told the newspaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Government efforts to introduce e-tolling and a high court order stopping it have raised questions about the state&#8217;s ability or willingness to guarantee debt, Business Day reported on Monday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":47864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[36,11177,6525,8029,11179,4378,11181,2072],"class_list":["post-48895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-active","tag-dawie-roodt","tag-e-toll","tag-e-tolling","tag-efficient-group","tag-nomura","tag-peter-attard-montalto","tag-sanral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48897,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48895\/revisions\/48897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}