The support of and cooperation with Germany, German enterprises active in Hungary and professional organizations have been decisive in Hungary’s achievements over the past couple of years, Minister for National Economy Mihály Varga stressed at the Hungarian-German economic forum held in Cologne. He visited the country as member of the delegation headed by PM Viktor Orbán.
In his speech titled “Partnership and stability in German-Hungarian relations”, the Minister said that cooperation between the two countries has been based on mutual trust stemming from complex economic and versatile cultural relations. As he pointed out, Germany has been Hungary’s number one trade partner, which accounts for 27.3 percent of the total volume of Hungarian exports and 26 percent of imports.
Companies partly or wholly owned by German enterprises employ more than 300 thousand people in Hungary, and Germany has also been the largest investor of the country: FDI from Germany has totalled some EUR 6.5bn since 2010, and more than fifty German enterprises have either opened a new production unit here or increased production capacity, he added.
Thanks to stable and booming German-Hungarian relations, more than 6000 German companies have up-to-date knowledge of the improving situation of the Hungarian economy and the Hungarian Government’s supportive and stimulating economic policy, he said, referring to the survey of the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry published last week.
Mihály Varga stated that a key conclusion of the survey was that the so-called investor confidence index, which combines companies’ predictions of the country’s economic outlook as well as that of the enterprise, showed significant improvement, rising from last year’s 10 points to 18 points.
The opinions of German companies reflect the economic achievements of the recent years, Mihály Varga said. The Hungarian Government had had to implement reforms that have fundamentally transformed the outlook of the Hungarian economy: pension- and tax reforms were implemented, fiscal management was made more economical and a war began to combat the grey and black economies.
“These changes – besides reaching the expected results – have also gained investor confidence,” the Minister said. This trust came from two directions, as the number of first-time investors and those that have been already active in Hungary was roughly the same among those who announced new investment projects. This signals further improvement in terms of Hungary’s capacity to attract capital and the increasing power of old investment to generate new ones, he emphasised.
(Ministry for National Economy)
