The Estepona City Council closed 2025 with one of the lowest average payment periods in Spain.

The Municipal Treasury has certified in a report that in December the average payment period to suppliers was 16 days. The deputy mayor of the Economic Area, Ana Vilaseca, has pointed out that during the socialist government suppliers came to wait an average of 1,492 days to collect what was contracted by the Consistory.

The City Council of Estepona will report tomorrow in the ordinary plenary session of February a report of the Municipal Treasury where it is reported that the average payment period to suppliers was 16 days, one of the lowest recorded in the public administrations of Spain.

The deputy mayor of the Economic area, Ana Vilaseca, explained that this is an important data because it highlights “the rigor with which this Consistory works every time you hire a job or service. In that sense, he recalled that this government team was found in June 2011 with a “shattering” figure, as was that the City of Estepona took an average of 1,492 days to meet the invoices submitted by suppliers.

The mayor has indicated that the systematic non-payments by the previous socialist government meant that the Consistory had “the unfortunate record of taking four years to pay the work contracted with companies”. Now, although current legislation establishes up to 30 days to meet supplier invoices, the City Council of Estepona continues to make every effort to pay as quickly as possible everything it contracts.

In that sense, Vilaseca has pointed out that this government team is “responsible” and knows how important it is for suppliers to collect on time, something that did not happen with previous corporations, which meant the “strangulation and suffocation” for many local companies that dragged successive defaults by the City of Estepona.

This economic milestone is in addition to the great achievement that the city reached last June when it paid all of the more than 300 million euros of debt that the Consistory had accumulated until 2011.

In this regard, the councilor of the Economic area has recalled that the City Council of Estepona was at the head of the most indebted in Spain, with a debt of 4,600 euros per capita. In relation to the payment of this inherited debt, she pointed out that all the unaccounted invoices were eliminated, the so-called ‘bills in the drawers’ (33 million euros); the payment of the entire inherited debt with the Junta de

Andalusia for the improper or unjustified use of subsidies granted to the previous socialist government (6 million euros); the payment of the debt with the General Treasury of the Social Security (60 million euros) and with the Tax Agency (18 million euros); as well as the payment of more than 90 million euros of the Payment Plan to Suppliers, among other concepts.

Ana Vilaseca explained that savings and responsible spending have been decisive in the economic management for the amortization of the debt, with a multitude of measures that have contributed to the elimination of superfluous spending or the squandering of public resources.