Speaker, Minister, although your budget has shown some improvement in meeting the priorities laid down by your department, it still has some glaring omissions and inclusions, with which we in the DA have a problem.
The first is the old favourite: the increasing backlogs in road maintenance, which analysts now put at R200 billion and require funding of approximately R10 billion annually and current expenditure of R1, 75 billion. I am sure you may argue that the current roads expenditure has grown, which we admit, by 13,4% annually since 2002-03 and it's expected to increase by 26% to R3,5 billion in 2008-09. But, Minister, it falls very, very short of the backlog, which I have just mentioned.
No consideration seems to have been taken into account of the fact that Sanro has a road network that's increasing annually, and that it has just inherited another 3 170 km. The bitumen price, which is directly related to the fuel price has almost doubled in the past two years and there is no incremental effect to that.
The second omission relates to the lack of provision for improving the quality of transport operations and broadening access to affordable public transport. For a number of years now the greater part of the department's budget has been spent on subsidising bus and rail operations. The DA believes that this money would be better spent on subsidising all commuter public transport, including taxis. I say this in the light of the fact that the projected R20 billion that your department has endorsed will be expended over the next three years on the Gautrain rapid rail link. This, despite Parliament's portfolio committee concerns that you should reconsider it. Since the bulk of our public transport systems are in a dire strate and your own department's national travel survey confirmed the high levels of public dissatisfaction with the current rail, bus and taxi services, the mind boggles as to why you should support such a project which in no ways is aimed at the currently marginalised users, from whom you actually claim to have support as the ANC.
The project may further prove to be financially unsustainable and in all likelihood further divide rather than bring the first and second economies together.