In 2015, all the bills between the Public Administrations and their service providers will have to be paid electronically. This strategy will reduce administrative costs by 39 million euros, but only Catalonia and Madrid are leveraging it effectively.
Hardly 6% of current bills are handled electronically even though in 2007 Spain was a pioneer in implementing a system like this only to sideline it soon after. Electronic bill paying will also help to eliminate a bad habit that many public officials have: stuffing unpaid invoices in their drawers for months. It will also allow the Tax Agency to manage government debts more effectively.
What's not explained is why a false savings concept was not created before a strategy that could have avoided problems with paying service providers in the first place, problems that have caused a massive accumulation of debt.
