BERLIN, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Germany's Transport Ministry said on Tuesday it expects a consortium charged with implementing a truck tolls system to pay compensation for revenue lost due to two delays in the project, although the group refuses to do so.
A ministry spokesman said the government wants damages to cover some of the 620 million euros ($775 million) in revenue lost so far because of technical problems that have delayed the system's initial August start date. But Rainer Knubben, a spokesman for the Toll Collect group, which includes Deutsche Telekom and DaimlerChrysler , told Tuesday's Financial Times Deutschland that there was no provision in the contract for compensation. The government last week granted Toll Collect a one-month reprieve, saying it would not cancel the contract before the end of January. It had previously threatened to fire the group if it did not commit to a firm new launch date by the end of December.
A ministry spokesman said on Friday there had been movement in talks with the consortium on a new launch date and on compensation for Germany's lost revenues of over 150 million euros per month.
Toll Collect executives have said the system should be ready by the end of 2004, or by the first quarter of 2005 at the latest.
Toll Collect, also partly owned by France's Cofiroute , has delayed rolling out the system, which uses satellites and mobile phones to track trucks on Germany's highways, due to faulty software and tracking devices.
Germany aims to charge 12-tonne trucks 12.4 euro cents per kilometre across its highway network, the most heavily used in Europe.