Foreign cars pay toll fees in forex

The Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) says all foreign registered vehicles are now required to pay toll fees in foreign currency in line with Statutory Instrument 32 of 2021 promulgated on Friday last week.

The move is expected to raise more funds for road refurbishment across the country. Most of the country’s roads especially in towns and cities are now in a bad shape following heavy rains received this season.

Zinara public relations and marketing manager Mr Tendai Mugabe confirmed that it was now mandatory for all foreign registered vehicles plying on Zimbabwe’s roads to pay toll fees in foreign currency.

“Yes, I can confirm that following the promulgation of Statutory Instrument 32 of 2021 all foreign registered vehicles are now required by the law to pay toll fees in foreign currency,” he said.

“This is a statutory obligation that all motorists have to abide by, and it is also going to help us raise the much-needed funds to disburse to our road authorities.

Most of our roads are now in a bad state after they were neglected for a long time and we hope these interventions by the Government to raise road funds will go a long way in making sure that we make meaningful disbursements to road authorities.”

Mr Mugabe said Zinara had embarked on a rebranding exercise where it would now restrict itself to its core mandate as enshrined in the Roads Act.

“It can be recalled that at some point Zinara overstepped its mandate and engaged in road development projects and that ended up being an audit issue,” said Mr Mugabe.

“The new management at Zinara is realigning the organisation’s operations in a massive rebranding exercise that will see the institution focusing solely on its legislative mandate.

“Our mandate as Zinara is to fix, collect and disburse road user fees to road authorities”.

Road development works are done by the four road authorities that we disburse to and these are the department of roads in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, the District Development, urban and rural councils.

“We have seen on social media people blaming Zinara for the deterioration of the road infrastructure in a clear indication that they are fully aware of Zinara’s mandate. It is important for the public to know and understand that Zinara is a road fund administrator.”

Mr Mugabe said their disbursements to road authorities were tied to the collections they do.

“We cannot disburse what we have not collected and at some point, the tariffs had become sub-economic for us to make meaningful disbursements.

“We are optimistic that the introduction of dual pricing is going to have a significant impact on the disbursements that we do towards road authorities,” Mr Mugabe said.–herald.clz.w