Latest news and stories about municipal debt in Portugal for expats and residents.
Local authorities are turning to the tax office to collect debts but guarantee that no child goes without food due to non-payment. Odivelas, Leiria, Ovar, and Maia are among the municipalities with the highest debts.
Although it has left the programme, the municipality continues to repay, over a 20-year period, the financial loans taken from the Municipal Support Fund.
The average time taken by municipal councils to pay their suppliers stood at 22 days at the end of 2025, a figure that remains “in line with 2024 and only one day above that recorded in 2023”, states the Public Finance Council in a report published this Tuesday. It is a number that places...
The debt of Portuguese municipalities grew again in 2025, halting a decade-long path of consecutive reduction that had begun shortly after the local government financial regime came into effect. The Public Finance Council (CFP) confirms this change in trajectory in its report on the budgetary execution of the Administration.
The debt relates to legal fees for expropriation proceedings carried out as part of road works that began in 2005.
