Pretoria - WesBank, the asset finance house in the listed FirstRand stable, has entered into a joint venture with the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) to facilitate the financing of new taxis under the government's multibillion-rand taxi recapitalisation programme.
Ronnie Watson, the chief executive of WesBank, announced the finalisation of the joint venture, called the SA National Taxi Finance Company, at the Car of the Year banquet in Johannesburg earlier this week.
Watson said while the joint venture would be managed and run by Santaco and WesBank, finance for the taxis would at this stage be provided by WesBank, Standard Bank Asset Finance and Nedbank Asset Finance due to the enormity of the taxi recapitalisation programme.
"To ensure sustainability, WesBank has dedicated human resources and infrastructure to this venture," he said.
Watson said until the recapitalisation programme started, the company would handle the taxi industry's general financial requirements.
The first purpose-built, safe and efficient taxi vehicles produced in terms of the requirements of the taxi recapitalisation programme were expected to be available by the middle of this year.
Watson said the taxi fleet must be transformed to survive and its survival was critical to the country.
He called on motor business leaders to assist the government in "the enormity of the challenge" of re-engineering the taxi segment.
Watson recounted his own experience of catching a taxi from Germiston to Vosloorus, which cost him R4.50, and realised that something was "very, very wrong".
"At that price there is just no way our taxi infrastructure is sustainable. The price is not sufficient to keep the taxi safe, to encourage the driver to perform professionally, and there's everything in that inequitable price to lead to accidents and loss of lives.
"They make a living now only because the taxis are old, paid for and in many cases uninsured," he said.
Watson said if the transport needs of the population could not be fixed by increasing taxes and investing billions in building formal transport systems above or below the ground as there were overseas, then taxis remained a critical part of the country's infrastructure.
Watson believed the solution lay in the introduction of direct subsidies.