Almuñécar Town Hall has managed to achieve a surplus of 4.3m euros in its accounting, the first surplus in 30 years, the Councillor for Hacienda says.

To get to this point the Town Hall accepted the Plan de Pago a Proveedores offered by the Central Government, whereby the Town Hall would be forwarded funds in order to pay off traders, who were waiting up to a year to be paid for their services. This entailed having their accounts overseen by the Central Government and restrictions on spending.

The Councillor for Hacienda, Rafael Caballero, pointed out that when the Mayor first took office a year back Almuñécar had a debt of 42m euros and 20m owing to traders.

There have been blows along the way, such as a total of eight million that court sentences has obliged the Town Hall to pay for misdeeds under the previous mayor, Juan Carlos Benavides Yaguas. Lastly, in the last ten years the Town Hall has paid off 18m in outstanding loans.

So, what does the Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, plan to do with the budget surplus? She wants to continue paying off loan debt as well as finance the building of a new municipal market, but more of that in a later article.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)