Fernando Machado, councilor for Finance at the Chamber of Gaia, said this Thursday, December 4, that the municipality received a “difficult inheritance” and has to pay 122 million euros in commitments by the end of the year, speaking of “lies” in the accounts of the previous executive.
“What we here today demonstrate is that the accounts presented were based on lies, errors, omissions that were presented here”, said Fernando Machado, after presenting five slides with what he classified as “lies” from the previous executive.
Specifically, the councilor mentioned that, by the previous executive, “a debt of 30 million was presented” – figures referring to September – but that the current executive claims to prove that “this debt is 122 million” to be paid by the end of the year.
“We are talking about bank loans which, according to the difference compared to what was presented, was 42 million more bank loans, and this is also a responsibility that we inherited and that we will have to resolve in the coming years”, he also said.
Regarding revenues, Fernando Machado said that “they were presented as certain tax executions, credits to the Chamber, which, in fact, did not exist, [e] the values were completely lower than what was presented”.
“Adding all this up, it is a difficult, heavy legacy, which we will have to resolve some things this year, but which will weigh on what the budget for 2026 is,” he stated, without wanting to provide further details regarding this document.
In the five ‘slides’ presented, the current PSD/CDS-PP/IL executive, led by Luís Filipe Menezes, presents different numbers from the balance sheet presented in the transition from the municipal cycle led by the PS executive of Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues and Marina Mendes (in recent months), in which he described the accounts as of September 30, 2025.
Regarding ongoing payments, the new executive speaks of 122 million euros in commitments/obligations to be paid by the end of this year, while the previous executive’s figures, until September 30, for undue payments, pointed to 29.7 million euros.
As for current credits owed (funds receivable), the new executive points to 27 million euros, while the previous executive pointed to 73.5 million euros, an “average value calculated by the revenue raised in 2025”.
Regarding debts to the Chamber in tax execution, the new executive points to a receipt of 2.5 million euros, and the previous one spoke of 8.4 million in the “portfolio of debts to the chamber in tax execution (revenue owed to the Chamber in the coercive collection phase)”.
There are also differences regarding long-term loans, as the new executive speaks of 125 million euros as “the total amount of loans contracted in payment/use”, and the previous one pointed to 84 million euros in “long-term loans in normal payment (from five to 20 years)”.
Finally, regarding the budget for 2026, the new executive estimates a negative starting point of six million euros, resulting from 334 million euros in expenditure and 328 million in revenue.
In the transition documents, the previous executive did not make reference to the 2026 budget, but refers to having left 90.3 million euros in the banks (75.3 million net) and, in the Interim Account presented at a Chamber meeting on Tuesday, in the Budget and Multi-Year Plan it foresees a zero total balance (263.5 million in revenue and expenses) and a global balance of -3 million euros (249.7 million in effective revenue and 252.8 million in effective expenditure), a value lower than projected in the major options for 2025 (725 thousand positive euros).
“We are going to have to make cuts”, said the councilor in view of the numbers projected for 2026, and during the press conference the municipal director of Finance and Heritage, Hélder Costa, stated that he does not yet have an estimate for the revenue collected with the IRS increase approved on Tuesday, but estimates a loss of one million euros with the changes to the surcharge, which increased by 0.1% for companies with a turnover of more than 150 thousand euros and decreased by 0.1% for those with a lower volume.
On Wednesday, PS/Gaia councilors considered that the PSD/CDS-PP/IL coalition had “no excuses” for failing to make electoral promises, considering that the inherited accounts did not justify the IRS increase approved on Monday.