Road contracts awarded by the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) will drop to ZAR10bn ($1.45bn) over the next two years.

Sanral has revealed that the high expenditure over the past two years is due to the implementation of the Gauteng freeway improvement project, which will be completed in the second quarter of 2011.

The agency is planning to complete feasibility studies of various projects by February next year to determine which will be carried out in the future.

The agency said that the construction work on the proposed projects will commence by 2012, when the ZAR10bn ($1.45bn) N1-N2 Winelands toll road will be one of the first projects to be implemented.