“Hungary has already been profiting significantly from China’s economic growth and will be profiting even more in the upcoming period; this means more jobs and development projects”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Hungarian M1 television’s Tuesday morning current affairs program.

The Minister said that the Central European region, which includes 11 EU member states and 5 Western Balkan countries, has always been a competitive region that practices rational politics, and its rate of economic growth is now higher than the European average. Hungary has set as its goal to be the country from the region that exports the most to China and attracts the highest level of investment from there.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, the country has achieved success in this endeavour; Hungary exports the most to China from within the region and Hungarian exports to China totalled some 2.25 billion dollars last year. Hungarian enterprises can spend this money on creating jobs, increasing wages or realising development projects.

Parallel to this, some 4.2 billion dollars of new Chinese investments have appeared in Hungary, meaning that companies that manufacture and provide services at the highest possible standard of technology have arrived, providing jobs for thousands of Hungarians, he stressed.

With relation to the Budapest-Belgrade railway line, the Hungarian Foreign Minister said China ships its goods to Europe via both land and sea. The final stop for maritime transport is predominantly the Greek port of Piraeus, where container traffic has increased from 3 million to five million within the space of a single year; the question is, via swath route will the continuously increasing volume of Chinese goods reach Western Europe.

If these goods reach their countries of destination via Hungary, that will mean new investments, job opportunities and logistics centres, in addition to which the project will lead to the establishment of a railway line that is not only important to the economy, but also has regional significance, Mr. Szijjártó explained.

(MTI)