“The new technical development centre of Great Britain’s largest automotive industry corporation, Jaguar, will be established in Budapest”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Kossuth Radio’s “Midday Chronicle” show on Friday.

“Jaguar’s new centre in Budapest will be working on new development projectss relating to the creation and introduction of new models. The significance of the centre is given by the fact that from 2020 new jaguar models will fundamentally be produced with electric drives”, Mr. Szijjártó said.

“Initially, 100 Hungarian engineers will be working within the field of electric drives and IT development at the centre, which will open early next year”, he added.

He underlined that the centre will be a classic intellectual workshop, which will take part in development projects supervised from Great Britain. “Last year, Jaguar spent 4 billion pounds on research & development”, Mr. Szijjártó said. “The significance of the investment is also indicated by the fact that Jaguar currently only has centres similar to the one being established in Budapest in Great Britain, Ireland, North America and China”, he stated.

According to the Minister, Jaguar’s decision was heavily influenced by Hungarian tax policy, in view of the fact that Hungary has the lowest rate of corporation tax in Europe, as well as tax allowances relating to research & development and the high quality of Hungarian technical higher education.

“This investment also fits in excellently with the dimensional shift of the Hungarian economy, which places high-end technology and high added value at the forefront”, he highlighted. “The investment reinforces Hungarian-British investor relations and the role of car production within the Hungarian economy”, he pointed out.

“The production value of the Hungarian automotive industry is expected to exceed 8500 billion forints (EUR 26.4bn) by the end of the year, and during the first eight months of the year 28.2 percent of total economic output was provided by the automotive industry, while 91 percent of the vehicles manufactured here are exported”, he said.

The Minister also said that thanks to the efforts of the people and the Government, the Hungarian economy could achieve permanent growth of over 4 percent. “Hungary is no longer part of the problem, but part of the solution; the economic growth of the Visegrád Group greatly exceeds the rate of European growth, and in the long-term, European growth will be coming from this region”, Mr. Szijjártó declared.

(MTI/Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)