The CEO was expected to retire at the end of August 2015 after being in the position since 1998, when the agency was founded.
Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona on Monday said that interviews for a new CEO had been conducted and a short list had been compiled. "The board had not found a suitable candidate. As you may appreciate, filling in such a senior position is a meticulous process and the board wanted to make sure it gets the most suitable candidate," said Mona.
Mona said that "all things equal", a new CEO would be announced before September.
In 2015, the Sanral board extended Alli's contract to December. In December, Alli's contract was again extended to March 2016 to allow the Department of Transport to "consult with structures including the Cabinet". In March, Alli got another contract extension to end-June.
Transport analyst Paul Browning said the position was "high-profile" with possibly more "down- than upside" in the public eye.
While the CEO had done an "excellent" job in making Sanral efficient, Alli was likely to have understood that the "sooner the decision about a successor is taken, the better", Browning said.
The board could be having difficulty deciding whether to appoint a new CEO from within or outside the agency, he said. "It could be possible that the difficulty is whether to promote someone from within, which would be a reasonable way to look at things, or whether to look at a new face with the right abilities who could take the organisation in a direction away from the events of previous years."
RMB credit analyst Elena Ilkova said investors would find Alli staying on to be a positive development as he understood the agency "better than anyone else".
Finding a replacement who had the engineering and roads background Alli possessed would not be an easy task and it was reasonable to assume that the agency had difficulty finding a successor, said Ilkova.
"It is not a common set of skills that Sanral is looking for. You need someone who understands roads and the framework of being an agency of government, and how that works, as well as what the limitations are."
Sanral has had a torrid time getting public buy-in for its electronic tolling on Gauteng highways since it completed the R20bn Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project in 2010.
In 2015, the City of Cape Town successfully challenged Sanral's plans in court to build tolls on the N1 and N2 in the Winelands. In December, Sanral was granted leave to appeal. The appeal hearing is set down for August in the Western Cape High Court.
In 2016, the agency cancelled two of its monthly bond auctions. Sanral abandoned its April bond auction because of a lack of investor interest, with the agency taking a "wait-and-see" approach in May when Moody's was due to announce its decision on SA's credit rating.
On its return to the bond market in June, Sanral raised R600m. In 2015, Sanral had to cancel auctions over five months after a failed debt sale in April was only attended by one bidder. It said at the time that it had cancelled the auctions to avoid raising its debt load until it received state assurance that e-tolling would continue.
Source: Business Day
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