The Hungarian automotive industry is competitive; this is underlined by the fact that it sells 91.8 per cent of its production abroad, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

Péter Szijjártó stressed at the conference Autózás 2.0 the value of the automotive industry’s production amounted to HUF 8,038 billion in 2017 which represents an historic record, and this accounted for 28.7 per cent of the total output of the Hungarian processing industry.

The automotive industry greatly contributed to the fact that, already based on the data for the first 11 months, the value of Hungarian exports exceeded that of 2016 and may reach EUR 100 billion which is an unprecedented figure in Hungarian history, the Minister said. Some 175,000 people worked in the automotive industry last year, and this is another record, the Minister observed.

So far on each of the four days of the week a new automotive industry project has been announced. On Monday Audi, on Tuesday Rehau Kft., on Wednesday Continental, while on Thursday Qualitative Production announced new projects which will create hundreds of new jobs for Hungarian people, the Minister underlined.

He recalled that from 2010 the government had carried out a reindustrialisation process, the most important pillar of which had been the automotive industry. From now on, however, a new mentality will be required: increasing the number of new jobs is no longer the most important goal. Instead we should concentrate on increasing the level of added value of technological standards, he said.

He pointed out that this is why the government had changed its method of encouraging investments: in the future those businesses will also be eligible for grants which, against the background of retaining the already existing jobs, carry out technological developments in the interest of maintaining or enhancing their competitiveness. As of this year they will start adopting a grant structure that is based on technology-intensive individual government decisions.

The new industrial revolution is creating a new type of competition in the economy, and competitiveness, too, will have new factors to consider, Mr Szijjártó said. This process is being led by the automotive industry as it is the most innovative sector using innovations and modern technologies in the highest numbers, he added.

He said the number of investments brought to Hungary last year had also broken a record. As part of the investment incentive scheme in 2016 71 projects, while in 2017 96 investments were brought to Hungary, and 36 of them were made in the automotive industry, Mr Szijjártó said, observing that they would like to see further progress in the field of electromobility and the development of autonomous cars. This may be boosted by the fact that they are planning to raise research and development expenditures from 1.4 per cent to GDP at present to 1.8 per cent by 2020, and to 3 per cent by 2030, he stressed.

He added that as part of the Jedlik Ányos Plan the goal is to have some 30,000 electric cars on Hungarian roads by 2020, while by 2030 30 per cent of the vehicle fleet of state institutions will have to be alternative fuel vehicles or electric cars.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)