The Governing Board of Arrecife approved this Thursday, December 9, by majority, the agreement of the credit operation with BBVA “for an amount of 27 million euros that cancels the debt collected in a final judicial ruling for the expropriation of the Ginory land, and to finance investments planned in the municipal budgets of this year”.
As detailed by the City Council, the BBVA offer was the “most favorable for the municipal interests of the four presented by other financial entities”, given that the others, “either did not cover the amount requested in the specifications established by the City Council”, or because the interest offered “was higher than that presented by the successful financial entity, which is 0.41 percent. This represents a daily saving for the City Council of 1,900 euros”.
“It was always my intention, since I took office, to pay off the total debt through a credit operation because that allows us to save the city of Arrecife around 8 million euros, while with the previous payment plan the interest imposed in court was around 5 percent”, says the mayor of Arrecife, Astrid Pérez.
As explained by the City Council, the credit operation has a repayment term “of 10 years with 2 more grace periods”, and the installments are “quarterly”, the first of which will be paid by the City Council on December 31, 2023. They add from the City Council that in the two years of grace period “only the interest installments will accrue”, and that the operation “does not involve study and/or opening commissions, early cancellation or any other type of additional expense on behalf of the City Council”.
The Arrecife City Council definitively approved in the plenary session of April 20 the municipal budget that included this credit operation. Of the total amount of the financial operation, “22,440,879.89 million will go to pay off the debt with the owners of the Ginory land, next to the Charco de San Ginés, and the remaining 4,559,120.14 million are budgeted for municipal investments”.
This operation is “viable”, according to the Arrecife City Council, since it is about “financing long-term investment expenses, with a positive net saving and also the level of debt does not exceed the established percentages”.