Wesbank CEO Ronnie Watson has announced a joint venture between the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) and WesBank, to be called the South African National Taxi Finance Company.
The joint venture was launched on Tuesday evening at the Car of the Year banquet.
The primary aim of the joint venture is to facilitate the financing of new taxis under the government’s taxi recapitalisation plan, but until the recap plan kicks off, the South African National Taxi Finance Company will handle the industry’s general vehicle financial requirements.
The minibus taxi industry is a critical pillar of the South African public transport sector, operating and competing with the heavily subsidised bus industry for more than five decades without receiving grants or subsidies from the government.
Currently, the taxi industry is the most available mode of transport to the largest number of transport “customers” across a variety of income and need segments.
Taxis carry 65% of the 2,5-billion annual passenger trips in the urban environment and serve as the base-load public transport carrier, both during peak and off-peak transport times.
At present, the taxi fleet consists of approximately 130 000 vehicles operating with legal transport permits. Approximately 95 000 are used for short- and medium-distance trips in the urban environment, and the remainder for rural and intercity transport.
More than a third of the vehicles operate in the Gauteng province.
WesBank has led the way in establishing this joint venture but due to the enormity of the taxi recapitalisation project, two other finance companies, NedCredit and Stannic, will also be participating under the South African National Taxi Finance banner.
Watson said South Africa’s taxi fleet must be transformed to survive, and its survival is critical to the country.
He called on business leaders in the motor industry to assist the government in “the enormity of the challenge” of re-engineering the taxi segment.
Earlier, he had recounted his own experience of catching a taxi from Germiston to Vosloorus.
“My 40-minute ride in a battered old ‘Zola Budd’ cost me just R4,50, and I realised that something is very, very wrong. At that price there is just no way our taxi infrastructure is sustainable. The price is not sufficient to keep the taxi safe, to encourage the driver to perform professionally; and there’s everything in that inequitable price to lead to accidents and loss of lives.
“They [the taxi operators] make a living now only because the taxis are old, paid for and in many cases uninsured.”
Yet, he said, South Africa was thoroughly dependent on taxis for millions of people to get to work.
Watson added that a joint venture with Santaco, the acknowledged representative body of the South African taxi industry, was the ideal avenue for WesBank to play a meaningful role in the taxi recapitalisation programme.
WesBank was an initiating party in the old South African Black Taxi Association scheme and over the past five years has been the main financier of taxis through Toyota Financial Services.
Santaco’s role in the joint venture will be to understand the needs of its members and together with WesBank will design special financial packages to match these needs while ensuring the economic sustainability of the taxi owners.
Santaco president Tom Muofhe said: “We chose WesBank as a partner for the joint venture because WesBank is the leader in taxi finance in South Africa and has demonstrated over a number of years their willingness to contribute to the taxi industry in South Africa.
“WesBank’s reputation as an innovative company and their long-term approach to partnerships made them an ideal partner to Santaco for the taxi recapitalisation programme,” Muofhe said. — I-Net Bridge