Portimão City Council recorded a drop of around 50% of its revenues in the first two months of 2012, compared to the same period last year. Only in the Municipal Tax on Onerous Property Transfers, the IMT (former Sisa), the drop was 67%.
However, the PSD of Portimão considers that this alleged generic fall in the municipality's revenue is a “lie”. "Already in the budget execution of 2011 it was clear that the municipality said that the fall had only to do with the IMT", while the IMI "has a tendency to rise gradually", either because "every year there are properties that had exemption and that pass to be paid", either because "the municipality sets the IMI rate at the maximum" or due to the increases caused by the new assessments of the Finances, said Pedro Castelo Xavier, president of the PSD/Portimão, in statements to Sul Informação.
The mayor Manuel da Luz, quoted by Correio da Manhã, considered the break as "dramatic", assuring that, with such a decrease in revenue, "there is no chance of assuming investment commitments and it will be difficult to fulfill commitments in the social area in a timely manner. and education».
Pedro Xavier, however, considers that these declarations by the socialist mayor are no more than "apologies". «The revenue of the Portimão City Council is 40 million euros and this has been seen for years. But there has been insistence on spending more than that. The scenario of a fall in revenue, namely the IMT, was already expected, as the municipal budget of the last three years already indicated this fall».
For this reason, adds the president of the PSD from Portimo, "it is not possible now to speak of a drop in revenues as if it were something unexpected".
A source from the Office of the Presidency of the Portimão Chamber confirmed to the Sul Informação that, in the first two months of 2012, there was a global drop in municipal revenues of around 3 million euros, due to the decrease in the IMT, but also in transfers from the State, which "have suffered successive cuts".
The same source added that, with regard to direct taxes that revert to the municipalities, in Portimão, in the first two months of the year, the IMT decreased 67% compared to the same period in 2011, having been charged less than 1 million and 520 thousand euros.
The crisis in the real estate sector, with the near stagnation of sales, is the explanation given for this sharp drop.
However, the same source from the municipality admitted that the IMI, in that period, even increased compared to last year, registering a slight increase of 90 thousand euros. "But it is not a rise that can compensate for the brutal drop in IMT."
The truth is that the Municipality of Portimão is facing serious financial problems, even presenting one of the greatest liabilities among municipalities across the country, according to the Financial Yearbook of Municipalities 2010. Portimão is even in 4th place in the Ranking of Municipalities with the highest net debt in 2010, after Lisbon, Vila Nova de Gaia and Aveiro.
Mayor Manuel da Luz assures that, from 2010 until now, the situation on the expenditure side has even improved, since, with the cut in expenses in the meantime, the negative net result was reduced from 35 million euros in 2010 to "only" 5 million last year.
But it is also true that, from 2006 to 2010, debts to suppliers increased from 10 million euros to 92 million euros, an increase of more than 1000%.
The serious financial problems of the Municipality of Portimão, guarantees Pedro Castelo Xavier, are “strangling” the local economy. "There are dozens of companies and hundreds of people who have been waiting for months, sometimes years, to be paid," stresses the leader of the Portimonenses social democrats.
The case of teachers of Extra Curricular Activities who were not paid on time in February, or of school gatekeepers and guards who are also not receiving their wages on time due to late payment by the Portimão Council, are, for Pedro Xavier, "just another example of the chaotic situation of the autarchy's finances."
"Which family in Portimão can be rested if they don't even know if their children will have the school up and running the next day?", asks the president of PSD Portimão.
Even more so when, due to the drop in revenue, the Mayor himself has already warned that “it will be difficult to fulfill commitments in the social and education area in time”.
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