Mozambique: Administrative Tribunal suspends Ring Road tolls – AIM report

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Mozambique: Administrative Tribunal suspends Ring Road tolls – AIM report

8:49 CAT | 30 Jan 2022

Photo: Mbhangua Tv

Mozambique’s Administrative Tribunal (TA) has suspended the start of charging motorists tolls to use the 70 kilometre long Maputo Ring Road.

There are four toll gates on the Ring Road and their operations were supposed to begin on 1 February (Tuesday).

However, a civil society organization, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), submitted an injunction to the TA to suspend the government dispatch that fixes the new tolls, and the TA accepted it.

The suspension of the dispatch is provisional, and the government members directly concerned, Public Works Minister Joao Machatine and Finance Minister Adriano Maleiane, may appeal against the injunction.

In the end, the TA must decide whether the tolls are legitimate, and hence whether the toll gates can open.

A CDD statement declared that the company Revimo (Road Network of Mozambique) “is forbidden by law from charging tolls while the legal process is ongoing”. So, until the TA takes a definitive decision, there will be no tolls on the Ring Road.

This is a clear victory for the civil society bodies that have been waging a bitter campaign against the tolls, claiming that they are “unjust”, “fraudulent”, “extortionate” and even “criminal”.

The toll gates are located at Costa do Sol, Zintava, Cumbeza and Matola-Gare. The toll at each gate is 40 meticais for light vehicles, minibuses and motorcycles. The toll for vans and buses is 140 meticais, and for heavier vehicles, with three or four axles, it is 380 meticais. Heavy goods vehicles, with five or more axles, will pay 580 meticais every time they use the Ring Road.

Passenger transport vehicles enjoy a discount of 75 per cent. Thus the toll for a bus is 35 rather than 140 meticais. The minibuses (known as “chapas”) that provide much of Greater Maputo’s passenger transport will pay ten meticais instead of 40.

Light vehicles which use the Ring Road frequently will receive a discount. The discount for vehicles which make between 11 and 20 journeys along the road in a month is seven per cent, rising to 60 per cent for any light vehicle which makes more than 60 journeys in a month.

Motorists have been driving along the Ring Road without any tolls at all, since the first sections opened four years ago. In those years, the failure to charge anything at all for use of this brand new road, built with a Chinese loan, has cost the Mozambican state millions of dollars.

Speaking to reporters last Tuesday, Machatine had no doubt that the tolls must come into effect, in order to raise funds for the maintenance of the road. He said that, before fixing the tolls, there had been discussions with interested parties such as the Maputo and Matola municipalities, associations of transport operators, the Confederation of Mozambican Business Associations (CTA), and communities in the areas crossed by the road.

Far from the tolls being too high, Machatine argued that they were too low. The Minister believed an economically rational toll would be between 50 and 65 meticais. The state had reduced the toll to 40 meticais as part of its “social responsibility”.

SUSPENSO O DESPACHO QUE FIXA TAXAS DE PORTAGENS NA ESTRADA CIRCULAR DE MAPUTO ATÉ DECISÃO FINAL DO TRIBUNAL ADMINISTRATIVO pic.twitter.com/pL0wJGHcfq

— CDD Moçambique (@CDD_Moz) January 28, 2022