Portimão leads the nation as the council that takes the longest time to pay its suppliers - six years.
There remain 71 councils that take longer than 90 days to pay companies that supply them with goods and services, reversing the improving situation at the end of 2104 when only 62 councils were this late in paying.
Portimão has improved though, at the end of last year suppliers could expect a wait of nine years to get paid. The figure had worsened by May with an average wait of 12 years so at the 6 month point in 2015 the 6 year figure can be classed as a success, of sorts.
The president of Portimão council, Isilda Gomes, says that great efforts have been made to regularise the existing debts.
"In six months we have paid off €30 million," and that "since the beginning of this year until April or May, the chamber has paid off all debts of under €50,000 to 478 companies."
Gomes explains that municipal cost cutting has enabled suppliers to benefit and that in the first half of the year, the council finances actually showed a positive balance against budget “for the first time in ten years."
Overall, Portugal’s councils steadily have been reducing their supplier debts which have fallen by a third since 2011 and which at the end of last year stood at €5.7 billion.
Much of this has been achieved by swapping short term bank borrowings for longer term finance supplied by the government under the Local Economy Support Programme.
The new law covering commitments when councils do not have the money to pay the subsequent account also has helped reduce those more incontinent councils whose activities in the past have borne little relationship to local needs and more to grandiose legacy schemes.
The new ‘commitments’ law also has enabled the state to withhold funds to municipalities and directly to pay off suppliers.
Portimão still leads the country in many aspects of local finance, none of them good, and Gomes has done a mediocre job of starting to clear up the financial mess left by Manuel da Luz whose reckless spending during his years as mayor already has gone down in local history as one of the more insane episodes in civic life.
