Toll traffic consistently exceeding pre-pandemic levels
/ Our Today
administratorTraffic up 7% for first nine months of 2022
Durrant Pate/Contributor
Traffic was up seven per cent along Jamaica’s toll roads as they have been consistently exceeding pre-pandemic levels for most of this year.
TransJamaican Highway Limited, operators of the toll roads, is reporting that “the lifting of the COVID-19 measures has resulted in a significant rebound in traffic with traffic now exceeding the pre-pandemic levels for eight of the nine months of 2022, up to September. Traffic for the month of September was five per cent above the pre-pandemic traffic levels of September 2019.
Traffic was also 12 per cent above that of September 2021. The third quarter traffic was up 5.2 per cent when compared to the pre-pandemic second quarter levels of 2019 and 12.8 per cent above second quarter of 2021.
Toll traffic up to September
In its quarterly report for September, TJH reports that for the first nine months of 2022, traffic was up seven per cent when compared to 2019 and up 16 per cent when compared to 2021.
TJH Managing Director Ivan Anderson is highlighting that the company remains financially healthy.
“As has been the case for the entire period of the pandemic, all of the company’s financial obligations have been met and the company continues to maintain significant reserve balances,” Anderson explained.
He argued that, “given that the pandemic is now behind us – from a traffic perspective, we expect that our traffic volumes for 2022 will not only be fully recovered but will also exceed our 2019 numbers”.
In the meantime, TJH Limited is seeing a surge in net profit for the just-ended September quarter, as the hike in toll rates kicks in. The annual increase in toll tariff, which took effect in July, is reaping benefits for the company, evidenced by its latest financial returns for the September quarter and combined nine-month period ended September 30, 2022.
Pre-tax profit for the September quarter went up five-fold to US$2.8 million, an increase of US$2.3 million over the US$0.5 million recorded for the same quarter in 2021.
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