The Government has adopted a stable budget for 2016 which takes into account the potential repercussions of the Greek crisis and includes a contingency fund of above HUF 200bn, Minister of State for Public Finances Péter Benő Banai told public news channel M1.

The Minister of State pointed out that only 0.4 percent of total Hungarian exports go to Greece and as there are no subsidiaries of Greek-owned banks in Hungary, the banking crisis is not expected to have knock-on effects in Hungary. However, the globalized economy has already reacted and affected the country: the forint exchange rate and stock exchanges have weakened, he added.

Events in Europe may influence Hungary’s monetary policy, he said, “I hope that the Monetary Council (of the National Bank of Hungary) will make the right steps concerning interest rates and other monetary policy instruments,” he said.

He stressed that as far as the Hungarian outcomes are concerned, Greek and Hungarian economic conditions must be observed separately: although a few years ago for some people the two countries belonged to the same league, by now “our facts and figures have become fundamentally different.” As examples, Péter Benő Banai mentioned that while the unemployment rate is some 20 percent in Greece, it is around 7 percent in Hungary and while the general government debt-to-GDP ratio is 180 percent in the crisis-stricken-country, it had been steadily declining in Hungary since 2011 and it reached 77 percent at the end of 2014.

(Ministry for National Economy)