SANRAL must account for R10 billion 'overpriced construction costs for GFIP'

10 May 2016 - 09:44 By TMG Digital

The South African National Roads Agency’s statement that it is only claiming up to R760m in civil damages against construction firms over the costing of the 2010 Soccer World Cup highway upgrades as well as roads in other provinces is a “slap in the face of the people of South Africa”. That’s the view of Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA).“In response to SANRAL’s media statement on Monday‚ that collusive construction companies will only be charged for up to R760 million‚ and that not all of this pertains to the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project‚ OUTA believes this response is insufficient and a slap in the face of the people of South Africa‚” said OUTA’s chairman‚ Wayne Duvenage.“It took SANRAL nearly three years to come up with this minuscule calculation and it is vague and lacking in detail‚” Duvenage added.Firstly‚ SANRAL needed to explain what extent of these civil claims pertained to the GFIP. Furthermore‚ what were the other projects they were referring to and how much on each of these did the civil claims apply to‚ Duvenage said.One supplier was responsible for 74% of the claims due‚ he added.“The public require absolute transparency and far more detail on this matter than SANRAL is providing.“Secondly‚ as much as SANRAL would like to ignore the question‚ this adjustment makes little difference to the estimated R10 billion to R11 billion overpriced construction costs for GFIP.“When will SANRAL answer the simple question:‘Did the public receive fair value for the GFIP at R17.9 billion (less the few hundred million of their civil claims due to be recovered)?’“SANRAL recently attempted to downplay OUTA’s research on the GFIP construction benchmarking paper‚ but they got their millions mixed up with billions and tried to pin their misreading of a case study report on OUTA‚ when in actual fact they merely embarrassed themselves‚” Duvenage charged...

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