Eight Percent of Portuguese Municipalities Now Settle Supplier Invoices Past the 60-Day Statutory Limit — Tábua, Caminha and Melgaço Post 146, 121 and 115-Day Payment Periods in DGAL's Q4 2025 Report

The Direção-Geral das Autarquias Locais (DGAL, Directorate-General for Local Authorities) latest quarterly tape on the prazo médio de pagamentos (PMP, average payment period) for Portuguese municipal councils shows the share of câmaras (municipalities) settling supplier invoices later than the 60-day legal limit set under Decreto-Lei 92/2010 has nearly doubled in a single quarter. The fourth-quarter 2025 reading, the most recent available from DGAL and circulated this week by Jornal de Notícias, puts 8% of municipalities above the 60-day threshold, against 4.8% in the third quarter.

Who Pays Slowest

The municipalities that stretch payments furthest are concentrated in the rural north and the Beira interior. Tábua in the district of Coimbra leads with a 146-day PMP, followed by Caminha in Viana do Castelo at 121 days and Melgaço — also Viana do Castelo, on the Minho border with Spain — at 115 days. Six municipalities settled invoices beyond 100 days in Q4, and another 20 recorded deteriorating prazos against the prior quarter. DGAL noted that 76 câmaras have not yet returned the required reporting for the period, leaving open the possibility that the worst-payer roster will lengthen when the missing returns are consolidated.

The Government's Counter-Move

The political response is already in motion. The Government has tabled a draft amendment to the Programa Pagar a Tempo e Horas (Pay on Time and to the Letter Programme) requiring quarterly public lists of: (i) Administração Central (central administration) services with PMPs above 60 days, to be published by the Entidade Orçamental (EO, Budget Entity); and (ii) the corresponding municipal roster, to be published by DGAL on the same cadence. Public-procurement contracts for goods and services will further have to include express clauses spelling out invoice-payment dates and the consequences of late payment — a frame that Ministério das Finanças (Finance Ministry) officials say is designed to reduce supplier disputes and tighten accountability across the central-local interface.

The Cascade Into the Private Sector

The economic stakes for the supplier base are non-trivial. The Confederação do Comércio e Serviços de Portugal (CCP, Confederation of Trade and Services) reported earlier this month that 60% of Portuguese companies acknowledge they pass late-receivables stress directly through into delayed payments to their own suppliers — a cascade dynamic that magnifies a public-sector PMP slip into private-sector working-capital strain. For SMEs that depend on a small number of municipal contracts, the difference between a 30-day and a 120-day settlement window can determine whether they make payroll, draw down a credit line at penalty rates, or take an emergency factoring discount that consumes the project margin.

What This Means for Residents and Operators

• If you supply one of the named câmaras: Negotiate contractual payment terms against the published DGAL number, not against the 60-day legal ceiling. Tábua, Caminha and Melgaço suppliers should be pricing financing costs against the realistic 100-plus-day settlement window.
• If you live in one of those municipalities: The PMP slip is a leading indicator of fiscal strain that can show up in delayed public-works completions, longer maintenance backlogs, and slower municipal-grant disbursement. Worth tracking your câmara's quarterly DGAL bulletin alongside the executive budget.
• If you are a contractor on procurement contracts: The new express-clause requirement on payment dates and late-payment consequences will be retroactively useful once it lands in force — but until the amendment is published in Diário da República, the existing legal frame applies.