Question NW2183 to the Minister of Transport
12 July 2018 - NW2183
Madisha, Mr WM to ask the Minister of Transport
In view of the fact that the road infrastructure is under severe strain (details furnished) and in light of the recently adopted Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, (a) what steps does he intend to take to ensure that the monetary allocation by the National Treasury towards road maintenance is increased in the next three financial years, (b) by what amount in each case and (c) what is the anticipated impact thereof on the maintenance and standard of the road infrastructure in future?
Reply:
(a) The Department of Transport is continuously engaging National Treasury, with regard, the need to increase the Budget allocation for Roads Maintenance.
There has been an increase in the budgets for National Roads as indicated in the graph link below.
http://pmg-assets.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/RNW2183GRAPH.pdf
Fig1 : Funding for National Roads
In the case of Provincial road maintenance, which are funded from their provincial budget allocations, the department shall continue to assist provinces through the Provincial Roads Maintenance Grant (PRMG), with an a estimated budget allocation of R35bn over the current Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).
|
Province |
2018/19 allocations |
2019/2020 allocations |
2020/2021 allocations |
|
Eastern Cape |
1 439 241 |
1 391 054 |
1 467 354 |
|
Free State |
1 299 602 |
1 235 577 |
1 303 349 |
|
Gauteng |
742 521 |
636 028 |
670 914 |
|
KwaZulu-Natal |
1 826 745 |
1 772 792 |
1 870 031 |
|
Limpopo |
1 124 146 |
1 105 360 |
1 165 989 |
|
Mpumalanga |
1 523 757 |
1 416 386 |
1 494 075 |
|
Northern Cape |
1 111 637 |
1 050 720 |
1 108 353 |
|
North West |
960 604 |
904 230 |
953 827 |
|
Western Cape |
1 007 414 |
911 213 |
961 194 |
|
Unallocated (Performance Component) |
1 058 305 |
1 117 570 |
|
|
Total |
11 035 668 |
11 481 665 |
12 112 657 |
Fig2 : Financial Support to Provinces
b) Refer to the Fig 1 and 2 above.
c) The PRMG accounts for roughly half of provincial road maintenance expenditure, with the funds mostly used for routine and periodic maintenance needs. Hence, very limited resources are available to rehabilitate the provincial paved road network unless the PRMG is significantly grown over the medium to long term or provinces allocate a much larger portion of own funds to road maintenance – ideally a combination of both measures.
The magnitude of maintenance backlogs due to lack of funding is such that it is unlikely to be addressed through national transfers and subsidies, especially given the National Treasury’s commitment to fiscal consolidation, which in the continued absence of notable economic growth must be predominantly realised through higher allocations from the provincial treasuries and/or from savings and efficiencies in respective provincial departmental expenditure.
Where the emphasis in the earlier years was more on the existence of infrastructure, at present the emphasis is on network availability and redundancy predominantly. This requires a different asset management approach. Therefore, Road Authorities need to revisit their maintenance strategies by looking at the relationship between infrastructure and mobility, so that the range of optional interventions can be broadened, to extend the lifetime of road assets.