The Government is protecting the results achieved by the Hungarian economy to date; this is the goal of next year’s budget and of the Economy Protection Action Plan.

The Ministry for Innovation and Technology’s State Secretary for Economic Strategy and Regulation László György highlighted: “Next year’s budget and the Action Plan are making the Hungarian economy more shock-resistant at a macroeconomic level, reinforcing the position of families and protecting the stakeholders of the Hungarian economy, while the tax cuts and tax and structural measures are significantly improving the development prospects of Hungarian enterprises.

According to the Ministry’s plans, 167.5 billion forints (EUR 520 million) will be spent over the next 3 years on the technological development of enterprises and on helping them appear on the market, of which 90 billion forints (EUR 280 million) will be non-returnable funding, Mr. György indicated.

162 billion forints (EUR 503 million) will be spent on research & development and innovation next year, 32 billion (EUR 99 million) more than this year’s budget of 130 billion forints (EUR 404 million).

Mr. György indicated that in 2010, 1261 billion forints (EUR 3.92bn) less was spent on supporting families; and according to the proposed budget for next year 2228 billion forints (EUR 6.93bn) are being earmarked for supporting families, meaning that we are spending over double the amount on reinforcing the position of families in 2020 than in 2009 or 2010. “As a result, people’s appetites for having children have also improved significantly in Hungary recently”, he added.

“One of the important elements of the 2020 budget is the reinforcement of the protection of the Hungarian economy via the subsidies that the administration wishes to afford to Hungarian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These are partly structural measures, and partly steps aimed at making paying taxes simpler and easier. The structural measures will include steps to facilitate the shift in the structure of the economy, as well as provisions that help businesses prepare for and conform to the challenges of the 21st century”, the State Secretary said.

“Over the next 3 years, the Government would like to assist the technological renewal, generational transition and international spread of Hungarian SMEs with at least 167.5 billion forints (EUR 520 million) in funding”, he stated. “The Government wants to support promising enterprises that were capable of increasing their annual turnover by 20 percent in consecutive years from 2014 to 2017, and which have increased their annual exports by 50 percent”, he continued, adding: “These companies have been called “Hungarian multinationals”, and we are talking about enterprises with an annual turnover of a few hundred million forints, or possibly a few billion forints, and which have the potential to perform competitively on international markets”.

Mr. György highlighted: “According to plan, Hungarian universities will be restructured to enable their knowledge to assist the activities of Hungarian enterprises, and for global value chains and the problems of multinational companies to also appear in research”.

“The idea is for 8 science parks to be established around 8 Hungarian universities; these will be projects costing hundreds of billions of forints and lasting several years. The Government would also like to increase capacity at these universities to enable them to jointly facilitate the development of Hungarian enterprises and their linking to the global market and the activities of multinational companies with the science parks”, the Ministry for Innovation and Technology’s State Secretary explained.

(MTI)