A total of Shs2.5 billion was collected as road toll on Kampala-Entebbe Expressway in the month of January, 2022.
Implementation of the road toll started on January 8, 2022, and according to Allan Ssempebwa, a communications officer at UNRA, the Shs2.5 billion collected within one month surpassed their expectations.
“We are happy that motorists are using the expressway and that the actual daily passages have so far surpassed our projections which at the time were made before toll fees were arrived at,” he said on Friday, 11 February 2022.
“We hope that the numbers grow even higher because we will use the toll collections to repay the loan for constructing the road and also for its operations and maintenance,” Mr Ssempebwa added.
He explains that an average 20,000 passages are made daily through the three toll gates on the expressway, up from the projected daily average of 13,000 passages.
Ssempebwa now says the authority is working round the clock with French firm Egis to install streetlights on the road.
“We want to ensure road user satisfaction on the expressway so on top of security patrols, free towing services, we are going to address the issue of darkness along the road by installing streetlights latest April this year,” he said.
Egis has been contracted to maintain the road and collect the road toll for five years ending 2026.
Motorists pay between Shs 3,000 and shs18,000 per trip or pay discounted rates for weekly and monthly trips at the toll gates in Mpala, Busega and Kajjansi.
Uganda has to repay the 350 million US Dollar loan used to construct the 51.4 kilo metre expressway. This includes the 25km toll way section from Busega through Kajjansi to Mpala and 1.2 Km along Munyonyo Spur Road.
The government acquired the loan from the Exim Bank of China in May 2011, to finance construction of Entebbe Expressway.
According to the loan agreement, the loan repayment schedule runs from July 21, 2019, to January 21, 2032. In the 13-year repayment period, the government plans to pay 26.8 million US Dollars, about shillings 95 billion, a year. It means the government should collect at least shillings 7.8 billion per month.
However, Ssempebwa says the toll collections are deposited to the Consolidated Fund and it is the government to make arrangements on the lpan repayment and portion for road maintenance and operations.
The government has been repaying the loan since 2019 without the toll collections due to delays in the enactment of an enabling law for tolling the road.
Initially, the government had planned to repay the loan through revenues from the road toll on the Expressway upon its completion.
However, the road toll system had not been implemented and the road was opened to traffic in June 2018. Now, with the legal framework in place, the Ministry of Works and Transport says that tolling roads will be a source of revenue generation to curb borrowing for infrastructural projects.