“Indonesia and Hungary are establishing a 500-million-dollar joint investment fund that will create the institutional opportunity for Hungarian enterprises to take part in the Asian country’s extremely serious transport and water management infrastructure development projects in an organised manner”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced following talks in Jakarta on Thursday.

Mr. Szijjártó met with, amongst others, Foreign Minister Retni Marsudi, as well as with other members of the government and businesspeople. In a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI, the Minister said that despite the huge geographical distance between the two countries, the system of relations between Hungary and Indonesia has experienced major development in recent years. “Many Hungarian enterprises that represent a particularly high level of technology have achieved a major share of the market, the significance of which lies in the fact that Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populated country, meaning enterprises can achieve extremely high revenues and development opportunities”, the Minister said, adding that it is Hungarian enterprises that represent a high level of technology and offer high added value that are performing particularly well in Indonesia.

Mr. Szijjártó drew attention to the fact that a Hungarian company is developing the introduction of electronic road tolls in Indonesia. “Budapest Waterworks has completed extremely large water purification projects for 36 million dollars, and negotiations have now begun on a new, 150-million-dollar tied aid loan programme, within the framework of which three hospitals will be fitted with oncological medical equipment manufactured in Hungary. Advanced negotiations are also underway on the modernisation of three military hospitals by Hungarian enterprises”, he said.

“There will be huge infrastructure development projects in Indonesia in the upcoming years”, Mr. Szijjártó said. “The two countries have decided to establish a 500-million-dollar joint investment fund, thus creating the institutional opportunity for Hungarian enterprises to take part in these infrastructure development programmes in an organised manner. The two countries will be contributing the resources equally, and the fund will be managed in Hungary. To date, Hungarian enterprise have been able to realise 1.5 billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure development programmes in Indonesia with the utilization of Eximbank’s loans”, the Minister said. “The signs that economic relations are gaining strength are also apparent with relation to the development of trade flow, in view of the fact that annual trade flow between the two countries now exceeds 200 million dollars”, Mr. Szijjártó stated. “In the interests of cooperation, the Hungarian government is increasing the number of scholarship places for Indonesian students to attend Hungarian universities to one hundred”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade added.

(MTI)