Praia, Cape Verde, 5 June – A road maintenance tax of 7 Cape Verdean escudos (0.06 euros) per litre of fuel will be paid by vehicle users in Cape Verde as of 2 July, according to Pan-African news agency PANA.

The law establishing the new tax, published Monday in an Official Bulletin, aims to set up a compensatory scheme for conservation and maintenance of the country’s roads based on the people using them paying for the service.

The legislation sets out that all private and public individuals and organisations that use passenger or goods vehicles on the roads, whether or not they are the owners of the vehicle used.

The president of the Road Maintenance Fund, José Figueiredo Ramos, said that the value of the tax had been set based on the comparison of the amount of fuel sold by the service stations and the amount of funding needed to maintain Cape Verde’s roads.

“We hope to initially collect 300 million Cape Verdean escudos (around 2.8 million euros) for road maintenance, but this figure could increase according to the development of the market,” he said. (macauhub)