SA taxi recapitalisation gets R885m injection (2)
South Africa’s Transport department is to receive allocations of R250-million in the 2004/05 financial year, R315-million and R320-million in the following two years “to initiate the taxi recapitalisation programme” and to support public transport services and infrastructure”.
This translates into 885 million rand in the next three years.
These figures appear in Wednesday’s Budget Review issued in tandem with the presentation of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s national Budget.
This will form part of an additional R2,4-billion allocation to the department — with the remainder going to support public transport services and infrastructure and the upgrading of national roads. The success of the taxi recapitalisation project “depends on improved law enforcement and robust administrative systems to manage the scrapping of taxis ad payments to taxi owners — envisaged to be R50Â 000 per scrapped taxi vehicle.
The R2,4-billion will be broken up into payments of R477-million in the coming financial year, R659-million in the following year and R1,3-billion in the final year of the medium term expenditure framework.
The two outer year allocations include R100-million and R250-million for passenger rail safety.
Transport is to receive R7,6-billion in 2005/06 up from R6,7-billion last year. – I-Net Bridge