The Badajoz Provincial Council launches a new edition of the Refundable Advance Fund with a global amount of 16 million

The Badajoz Provincial Council has launched a new edition of the Financial Fund for Refundable Advances 2022 with a total amount of 16 million euros, of which 4 million euros will be financed with the resources of the Autonomous Collection Agency (OAR) to address treasury operations that need to make the municipalities or short-term loans.

The remaining 12 million, as the president of the Diputación de Badajoz, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, has advanced, will be addressed with “something new too” and that “clearly” meets the objective of continuing to maintain the plan, which is to reach an agreement, after a bidding process, with a financial institution.

In this way, the provincial institution undertakes to pay the interest on that loan so that the municipalities have “zero interest”, and each consistory that decides to present itself will carry out this operation directly with the selected financial entity.

This was stated by Gallardo in a press conference accompanied by the provincial deputies of the OAR, Saturnino Alcázar, and of Economy and Finance, José Carlos Contreras, in which he presented the call for the 9th Financial Fund for Refundable Advances 2022, which is published this Wednesday in the Official Gazette of the Province (BOP).

In his speech, Gallardo pointed out that it is a well-known plan given that it has been carried out since 2016 with a charge to the remaining treasury and that, although changes have been made in the form of management, “in no case” does it affect the municipalities that are going to be beneficiaries in “equal conditions” as in other programs, collects Europa Press.

Similarly, it has detailed that, since the Financial Fund was launched in 2016, it has addressed “many” of the needs that municipalities have had throughout this time in the field of short-term treasury, investments, four-year legislature loans or debt refinancing to improve the financial conditions of the councils, whose reality today “is very different” from that of that year and today the remnants can be spent and the possibility of having Greater capacity to finance works.

It has also abounded that today the “majority” of the city councils are healthy, but that this does not prevent that at times there are “treasury tensions” or that it is needed to fulfill the commitments of the electoral programs, for which it has indicated that That is why “probably and after so much time this program continues to have the same or more validity than then” and “it continues to be a need”, which is why they have wanted to launch a new edition that doubles the amount of last year.

Thus, he has summarized that it has two fundamental pillars, one of 4 million for treasury operations and another of 12 million for other needs related to investments that the municipalities must make with that financial entity so that the interest is “zero” and that, previously , they will have to present themselves, as has been done “always”, to an order that will be issued by the deputation.

In this last sense, he has pointed out that, depending on the volume of requests and with a maximum of 800,000 euros “as it has always been”, if the 12 million who have requested 800,000 euros are not covered, that amount will be given, as well as that in the event that those 12 million are exceeded, it will be done proportionally downwards so that all municipalities have the possibility of being beneficiaries of this plan, which is known as “the good bank” because “we are indeed a bank, in this case the Diputación de Badajoz, better than the others».

“It does not mean that the rest is bad, it means that we are more generous because the municipalities do not have to contribute their own resources and, in addition, they can return this money with the ease that the OAR itself gives them in their monthly withholdings,” he remarked. , along with the fact that, as mayor, he has been a beneficiary, and it is a plan that “is paid without you realizing it.”

More than 50 million since 2016

Miguel Ángel Gallardo has highlighted that it is an “identical” plan in the philosophy of what has been until now and that, although the organization is different, in any case it pursues the common objective of ensuring that the policies developed by the town councils are can comply, as a consequence of this possibility that allows to have greater treasury and to be able to take it to investments.

By way of analysis, he specified that to date the council has lent 53.4 million euros since 2016, which have served to generate employment, pay suppliers or make investments, while underlining that in 2016 59 municipalities benefited with an amount of 17.3 million, in 2017 37 municipalities with 10.4 million, in 2018 29 with 12.1 million, in 2019 18 with 5.5 million and in 2021 26 with 8 million, and that in 2016, 2017 and 2018 there were two calls for repayable advances.

In relation to the requirements of the municipalities, it has concluded that if the resources that the OAR enters from the taxes of the consistory are less than 800,000 euros, this amount cannot be requested, but the limit is in the income that said body can capture; and that another is the “financial health” of the city council is “in accordance” with the norm established by the Government of Spain, so that they have “the capacity to return it” which, in the case of the province of Badajoz, estimates that they are 95 or 99 percent of the consistories.