Municipality of Amsterdam expect their payment issues to be fixed by May 19

The payments made by the municipality of Amsterdam will be back to normal before May 19, as it stands. Amsterdam’s alderman for finance, Hester van Buren, said this on Thursday during a committee meeting. It was initially thought that the payment issues would be fixed by April 7, and May 19 had been mentioned as a deadline in a worst-case scenario.

Technical issues which arose due to changing to another financial system, AFIS, resulted in thousands of bills not being paid on time. Institutions, self employed workers, and suppliers are, therefore, still waiting for their money.

There are currently 12,772 invoices for which the payment term of 30 days has expired. At the peak of the issues, there were approximately 31,000 invoices with late payments.

Van Buren reported on Tuesday that the costs for the emergency operation are higher than expected, because a higher number of people are being hired for the quickly established crisis team. The municipality first expected the costs to be around 700,000 euros, it has now risen to around 2.8 million euros.

Several Amsterdam City Council members questioned on Thursday if the bill is going to become even more expensive or if external partners are going to cover a part of the costs. The alderman could not say anything about this as of yet.

The Spring Memorandum with updates about this year’s budget, which is scheduled to be published on May 22, will show how the costs are to be covered. This memorandum is also being made via AFIS, but that has not caused any issues, said Van Buren.

The debates will continue in the upcoming city council meeting, which will be held on April 2. The alderman survived survived recent motions with other member of the coalition board displaying their sadness, disapproval and distrust during the previous council debates.