2 days Ago
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy says that, despite Transnet's turnaround progress, the State-owned enterprise is not able to meet the target of increasing South Africa's yearly rail volumes to 250-million tons alone. The Government of National Unity is, therefore, prioritising efforts to open the network to third-party operators and private infrastructure investment in line with its "apex" goal of facilitating rapid economic growth. Addressing a Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern Africa (Seifsa) conference in Ekurhuleni, Creecy revealed that she had set a year-end deadline for the publication of a final Network Statement that was attractive to private operators, but still met the revenue needs of Transnet.
Making no reference to earlier commitments that the statement would be published by September, Creecy said only that finalising the document was "quite a complicated balancing act". A draft Network Statement was published by the Transnet Freight Rail Infrastructure Manager earlier this year ahead of public hearings held by the Interim Rail Economic Regulator Capacity, where the high tariffs implied when using the proposed methodology were heavily criticised by stakeholders. "What we understand when we interrogate the tariff is that the tariff has.
.. Terence Creamer.
