The current expenditure of the Municipality of Tavira fell, throughout this year and until July, 10 percent, through "restraint measures applied in the day-to-day of the municipality", he told the Sul Informação Jorge Botelho, president of the municipality.
"We are in the middle of a particularly demanding autarchic mandate, given the financial conditions that all municipalities are going through", he stressed.
The mayor of Tavira was speaking last night, in a balance with journalists about his two years in office. Jorge Botelho recalled that, when the new PS executive he presided over entered, "we immediately cut 20 percent of the fixed structure of the Chamber".
"Throughout this time, our concern has been to reduce current expenses, to free up money for investment expenses."
"Our strategy of budgetary restraint involves not spending more than we can, nor indebting the Chamber more than it can be indebted," added Jorge Botelho.
This slimming operation of the municipal machine has proved to be increasingly important, taking into account the profound crisis that has hit the country and to which the Câmara de Tavira is not immune.
"This past year, we've suffered a 20 percent drop in revenue." Only the decrease in the IMT collection, a tax that is levied on real estate sales, reached, on September 30, «66 percent, which means almost three million euros less to enter the Chamber's coffers», revealed the mayor.
But also in another important area for the Chamber's revenue, the amounts collected are falling sharply: in revenue from the licensing of subdivisions, the fall in revenue reached 48 percent, ie, less than 1,1 million euros collected.
“Right now, the municipality of Tavira has less than five million euros in revenue”, stressed Jorge Botelho.
Therefore, stressed the mayor of the municipality, "we have accentuated the daily containment measures". One of the examples he gave was the «Summer in Tavira», «which did not fail to be made with great quality, even for what it means to the attractiveness of the county, but which this year cost 35 percent less than in 2010, thanks to a schedule that was made earlier and other synergies that we were able to create».
However, with revenues falling by 20 percent overall and expenditures decreasing, but only 11 percent, Jorge Botelho stressed that it was necessary to take new measures to contain them.
"Last month, I made an internal order, which imposes a set of additional containment measures on the services of the Chamber." What kind of measures? «We cut events, parties, dinners, allowances, overtime», enumerated Jorge Botelho.
“We didn't do much publicity for these containment measures, because this is our way of doing things. But the truth is that we took the measures and we are already getting results”, added the mayor.
The rigorous efforts that the Town Council of Tavira has been making in this term, over the past two years, allowed, for example, that «we have left the lot of Town Halls that did not pay their suppliers in 90 days», underlined the socialist mayor.
Despite the containment caused by the sharp drop in revenue, the Tavirense municipality decided to lower the surcharge to 0,5 percent in 2012. Jorge Botelho even expresses his intention, in 2013, not even to charge surcharges to companies.
"We are in the opposite direction of most of the Chambers", he stressed.
The spill is a municipal tax on the profits of companies headquartered in the municipality. However, Jorge Botelho underlined that, «if we have an industrial park and a business park and we want to attract investing companies to these two structures, we have to create a set of conditions for them that make their settlement in Tavira attractive». Low spillage and its future disposal is one of those conditions.
Furthermore, as the president admitted, "as the companies are at the moment, the revenue from the spill would not be large either".
Comments