Villena reduces average payment period to suppliers to less than 30 days

Villena City Council has successfully reduced its payment process to suppliers to less than 30 days during the third quarter of this year, reaching 29.69 days, according to the municipal treasury report.

In this way, the Alicante municipality "is on the path of what the norm establishes," explained the Finance Councillor, Juan José Olivares, who also highlighted that there are issues "we are waiting to resolve that relate to work dynamics and the availability of municipal workers."

The head of Finance at Villena City Council explained that, until this quarter, the average payment period to suppliers exceeded 60 days due to a technical problem: the certifications of the Edificant Plan, whose management corresponds to the Conselleria, were accounted for as payments by the City Council itself, artificially increasing the average. With this issue resolved, Villena is once again below the payment period established by law.

In fact, Olivares pointed out that at present "the municipal situation is normalized in the payment of invoices, with a debt-free City Council and a significant financial reserve thanks to the surpluses. And all this despite the requirements and bureaucratic documentation we must respond to daily."

The Department of Finance has expressed the difficulty of oversight given the volume of activity, the large number of files related to tenders, works, activities, and projects that—in some cases—register certain delays due to successive communications with the interested parties.

However, the councillor acknowledged that the City Council needs to adjust some specific issues that are improvable and correspond to some autonomous bodies dependent on the Council but with independent activity. "We have the example of the Conservatory of Music Board, which presents an excellent average payment period to suppliers of 22.36 days in this period, but in other cases, we must continue improving," he explained.