The Planning Department at Malaga City Hall has been inundated with offers from local construction firms to carry out projects financed by the state fund known as 'Plan Zapatero'. These companies, which have seen a considerable loss of income as a result of the recession, are now bidding for the kind of contracts which just a few years ago they showed no interest in at all.

Out of the 136 projects financed by Central Government, 121 are being dealt with by the Planning Department's contracts and purchases service which has had to take on additional staff from other areas of the department such as Architecture, to deal with the thousands of offers made by more than two hundred companies for the works in question.

"All kinds of firms have shown interest," say sources from the department. "The majority of them are based in Malaga, but we have received bids from companies in the rest of the region, and from Cataluña and the Basque Country too."

An average of 30 or 40 tenders have been received for each project, but it seems that the majority of the construction firms have their sights set on the same one: a nursery which is to be built in the Parque Tecnológico area on the outskirts of the city.

This situation is completely different to the one faced by the department in recent years. "In the past, five or six bids were made for each project, and there were times when a project received no offers at all," says the department.

According to the department's calculations, the building projects in the pipeline will provide work for an average 1,200 people every day for five months.