Not only the level of government debt and fiscal processes have changed favourably, but every major indicator that describes the status of a country’s economy, Minister of State for Public Finances Péter Benő Banai told public news channel M1.

As the Minister of State pointed out, stable fiscal management has been maintained while economic growth could be increased to exceed the EU average, the number of people in employment has been rising, wages in real terms are on the rise and the current account has been posting massive surpluses.

The fiscal deficit may even slip below the 2 percent of GDP target this year. Especially now that S&P’s, which used to be the most critical of the big three credit rating agencies, has upgraded the country, Moody’s is quite likely to follow suit and lift our status to investment-grade category, he stressed.

Due to the upgrade, the yields on government securities with long maturities have declined by 8-10-15 percentage points, and this means that debt financing will become cheaper. Even before this move, financial investors had long regarded Hungary as a creditworthy borrower which could consistently fulfil financial obligations. That is why yields on Hungarian benchmarks with a tenor shorter than 10 years had been lower than those on the corresponding bonds of Poland, a country with a better credit valuation than Hungary.

(Ministry for National Economy)