For whom does the road toll greedily?

China's road management authorities have claimed they spent as much as 431.2 billion yuan ($69 billion) on the building, operation and maintenance of expressways, while collecting 365.2 billion yuan in tolls in 2013, meaning there was a huge deficit of 66 billion yuan.

The Ministry of Transport said that 314.7 billion yuan has been used to pay for bank loans, 39 billion yuan for maintenance while 45.7 billion yuan was spent on operational and managerial costs. "Other expenditures" were 10.4 billion, the ministry said.

It is obvious that the ministry has released the data not only to satisfy the public's right to know, but to quell the rising public ire over the continuing collection of tolls for expressways long after their construction costs are supposed to have been recovered.