“We have succeeded in selling last year’s record harvest and continuously increasing agricultural exports are one of the success stories of excellent quality crops and Hungarian agricultural diplomacy”, the minister of Agriculture said on Hungarian M1 television’s morning show and Kossuth Radio’s “180 Minutes” program.

“There is a market for our agricultural products, and trade in cereals showed a particular increase during the first five months of 2017”, Sándor Fazekas said. “Export increased by 14 percent year-on-year, which equates to 3.6 billion euros. The foreign trade surplus increased by 30 percent. This all indicates that a strengthening agriculture and increasing production surplus promises higher revenues and profit”, the Minister said.

“Neighbouring countries continue to be our traditional export markets. Romania, the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Greece are especially high importers of Hungarian wheat, while the majority of our maize is exported to Italy and Romania”, the Minster detailed. Our maize exports have increased by 50 percent to almost 2 million tons, which we have sold, while wheat exports doubled during the first 5 months of the year. Additionally, we also export milk products, vegetable oils, processed products, wine and bioethanol.

“The number of Hungarian agricultural products available in far-off markets such as China, Japan and several developing countries, has also increased”, Mr. Fazekas said. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the trading house network, the Agricultural Marketing Centre and the Ministry of Agriculture are all working to conquer the markets of these faraway countries and to ensure that Hungarian products also reach these markets”, he said, noting that Hungary has the highest number of Chinese import licences among the countries in the region. “China is one of the world’s largest food importers”, the Minister said. “Lots of enterprises are standing in line to ship their products to China. Today, some one percent of our exports go to China, the majority of which is constituted by high-quality Hungarian pork, with relation to which we have almost doubled our exports”, the Minister said during his radio interview.

Mr. Fazekas recently met with China’s Minister of Agriculture at a meeting of 16 Central and Eastern European agriculture ministers in Slovenia, where it was confirmed: “China is closely monitoring Hungary’s progress, and we support China’s plans to make use of our central geographical location to make Hungary a kind of logistics centre for trade flow between China and the region”, the Hungarian Agriculture Minister said.

(Ministry of Agriculture Press Office)