Portimão council led the list of slow payers last year with an average invoice settlement period of 1,683 days, nearly five years.
The council, rightly in this case, blamed the last administration which, under the mad-cap regime of Manuel da Luz, went on a wild spending spree with little to show for its insane largesse.
Portimão, Nazaré, Celorico da Beira and Paços de Ferreira were, at the end of 2016, the councils with average payment periods to suppliers of over a thousand days.
According to the list published by the Directorate General of Local Authorities, there were only 80 municipalities, out of a 308 in the country, whose average payment period was more than two months.
In Portimão, the delayed payments arose "from debts that were accumulated in previous mandates" that had a "bad effect on the average payment term."
In October last year, Portimão council, led by Isilda Gomes, finally gained access to a loan from the Municipal Aid Fund and started to pay off its long-suffering creditors. The Court of Auditors gave the go-ahead to credit the first €30 million of a whopping €142.5 million loan taken out on far better terms than at the previous interest rate of around 7% which had been draining council cash, almost as fast as it was coming in.
The council now has 27 years to pay off its loan at a more comfortable 1.75% interest rate.
This all showed through in the figures last year as in the second half, Portimão council was able to reduce the payment delay by 433 days compared to the end of the first half when payment to suppliers took an average of 2,116 days.
The trend "will always be to decrease this payment period,” as the council receives the remaining five tranches from the Municipal Support Fund, the last of which will arrive in the first half of 2018, allow the municipality to pay off the last of its suppliers.
Overall, council debts to suppliers fell to €177 million by the end of 2016, a decrease of 27% over the previous year, according to information relayed to Parliament last week by Deputy Minister in the PM's office, Eduardo Cabrita.
The average payment period across the nation's councils is just 45 days, a number that brings "envy to many sectors and other areas of public administration," concluded Cabrita.
