At long last Portimão council is to get the first of many big cheques to enable it to pay off long-suffering creditors.
The Court of Auditors has given the go-ahead to the Municipal Aid Fund (FAM) to send the first €30 million which will free up money previously spent on interest payments of up to 7%.
The council now has 27 years to pay off its €142.5 million debt mountain but at 1.75% not at interest rates that left the council gasping for air as it drowned in a financial cesspit left by previous mayor Manuel da Luz.
"We dreamed of this day, we are very happy", said Portimão mayor Isilda Gomes. "This was a renegotiation of medium and short-term debts in to long-term borrowings. This allows the release of €6 million a year for investment in public spaces and to help families."
According Isilda Gomes, "when I came to the council, we had interest rates of between 6.5% and 7%, now we will pay 1.75%."
The amount borrowed, approved by the Municipal Aid Fund, was €142.5 million euros, but Gomes explained that this total already is lower - "I have been paying an average of one million euros of debt per month and the higher figure related to December 2015. €8.5 million has already been already paid off, leaving €128 million left to pay."
Isilda Gomes said the Court of Auditors which also had to approve the deal, had been rigourous, demanding answers to some pretty tough questions but the deal has gone through and the money now has been released.
As Isilda Gomes enters her last year in office, she wants to leave a tidier and more pleasant city after years of not having enough money to replace a lightbulb.
"The public spaces have been abandoned. We have been investing very little. The streets, the surfaces, pavements, gardens, public lighting, all of his has been a low priority but we now want to bring it to the front."
There will be money to invest, but Portimão council is on a short leash, "there is an executive committee of the Municipal Aid Fund that continuously will monitor the loan. We must submit reports on the money and on everything we do," concluded Gomes, to the relief of the local ratepayer who, after all, has ended up paying for the previous mayor's fiscal incontinence.
As for the previous mayor and his cronies, Luís Carito and Jorge Campos, formerly the vice-mayor and a councillor at Portimão council; the head of Portimão Urbis, Lélio Branca, and Artur Curado and Luís Marreiros from Pictures Portugal were arrested in June 2013 on suspicion of corruption, maladministration and money laundering - we await their prosecution with interest.
The then mayor, Manuel da Luz, denies all knowledge of any financial irregularities going on in the council or at Portimão Urbis, or presumably at the International Autodrome which local taxpayers treated with such unknowing generosity.
