The Hungarian construction industry is performing outstandingly well also by international standards.

According to the data of the Central Statistical Office, in July the volume of production increased by 32.9 per cent on a year-to-year basis, and by 9.6 per cent compared with June on the basis of seasonally and working day adjusted indices.

At his Friday press conference, Tamás Schanda, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology stressed that the Hungarian construction industry is doing extremely well also by international standards. While the precise July data is not yet available from all EU Member States, based on the information made accessible to date, it is possible to conclude that while compared with the 2010 average, the production of the construction sector in Hungary has expanded by 86 per cent, in the EU it has only increased by 6.4 per cent. The Hungarian performance figure is also outstanding compared with the Visegrád countries as even in Poland which follows Hungary in the rankings there was an only a 29.7 per cent increase. Also compared with the corresponding 2014 data, there appears to be a similar trend: the construction industry in Hungary has expanded by 75.5 per cent compared with five years earlier, while in the EU there was a mere 11.7 per cent increase.

The positive figures reflect the government’s measures which are designed to promote housing and to support the housing market as well as the fact that Hungarian applicants are using cohesion funds well; major infrastructure projects are being implemented one after the other throughout Hungary, and state projects, too, are playing a significant role, the State Secretary said.

Detailing the figures, he said the construction of buildings has increased by 32.2 per cent, while the construction of other building structures by 34.1 per cent on an annual basis. In the case of buildings, the construction of residential, cultural and industrial buildings has boosted the increase, while in the case of other building structures, road, railway and utility construction projects are responsible for the growth.

The State Secretary stressed that the Hungarian government pays particular attention to and allocates significant funding for supporting families. Its goal is to ensure that there should be no financial obstacles to starting a family; for instance, the fact that a family does not have an appropriate home should not present a problem. The introduction of preferential VAT on housing and the extended family housing benefit (csok) serve this purpose as well.

He added that results are already forthcoming this year as in the first half of the year 6,472 new homes were occupied in Hungary. He highlighted that in the first six months the number of new planning permission applications and expedited housing applications increased by almost 1 per cent to 18,227 on a year-to-year basis.

According to the State Secretary, the statistics showing the performance of the construction industry give rise to optimism as did the macro-economic data released earlier which indicated that in the second quarter Hungary’s GDP increased by 5.1 per cent, more than four-fold the EU average, while the volume of investments in the national economy increased by 18.8 per cent, he pointed out.

(Ministry of Innovation and Technology/MTI)