(dr) Government of Portugal
Paulo Alexandre Sousa, new provider at Santa Casa
The provider has terminated rental contracts for properties that were not being used, resulting in savings that exceed R$300,000 annually.
In an interview with and Renascença, the provider of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa provides details of the restructuring he has carried out at the institution.
One of the changes that Paulo Duarte de Sousa has made is to terminate rental contracts on properties that were not even being used by Santa Casa. One of the examples given by the provider is a property on Rua de Pedralvas, in Benfica, which Santa Casa had been renting since 2015, with a rent of 2917 euros.
“This property was never used. We terminate the contract. Then, in the games area, we had a set of four warehouses supporting exploration. Simultaneously, in early 2024, a new logistics center had been opened on a lease, which was clearly underutilized. We ended up negotiating the early termination of two rental contracts for these warehouses, one for 9,180 euros per month, the other for 19,179 euros per month. We transferred all items to our logistics center and stopped paying almost R$30,000 per month in rent. That’s 300 thousand euros less per year“he explains.
The plan also includes an objective of obtaining “80 million euros in disposalsbut many of them are not effective disposals”, since “a large part of this amount” must be “reinvested in the portfolio itself” when the institution reaches 100 million in current cash.
Paulo Duarte de Sousa says that rebalancing the accounts is one of the priorities of his mandate. “We have to get restore our accounts and gain space to have a more stable situation in the future, while at the same time ensuring that Santa Casa fulfills its mission of supporting the most fragile”, he states.
One of the ways to save on human resources has been a early retirement program which was in force for one month, between October and November. “We far exceeded our objective: we had established that the program had to have annual impacts of around R$220,000 and the impact that was achieved was R$455,657.70”, says the provider.
Paulo Duarte de Sousa also confirms that he found “quite a few” cases of family members working at Santa Casa. “What is very relevant and cannot happen is that someone who has a relative acting and is in clear conflict of interest can continue in these roles. We cannot have someone who has a relationship with another person and who is that person’s hierarchical superior”, he emphasizes.
