American General Motors and its subsidiary Opel will increase their staff by five hundred people and will establish a new training centre, as well as a service centre in Hungary, Péter Szijjártó and Joachim Koschnicke, the Opel Group’s Vice President of European Government Relations announced at a press conference.

GM intends to increase its engine production by 50 per cent compared to last year and wants to produce 580,000 engines annually, which means hiring 500 new employees in 2015 for their Hungarian plant, they informed. Currently, 1,400 people work at the factory in Szentgotthárd.

A new training centre will be established by this autumn with an investment worth EUR 1.7 million at the automotive company’s factory in Szentgotthárd. EUR 700,000 out of the total budget of the investment will be spent on the construction of the training centre and EUR 1 million on the procurement of equipment. The centre will ensure the labour supply for Opel and at the same time it will be an important centre of dual training in the West Hungary region, the Opel Group’s Vice President added.

It was also announced that General Motors’ business service company, GBS, will open its global finance and accounting service centre in Budapest in May. The centre will initially create jobs for 40 people and this number may be further increased to 80 people later on.

Péter Szijjártó declared that Hungary is standing firm in the increasingly stiff international competition for new investments. The Minister emphasised that the total value of investments in Hungary in 2014 amounted to HUF 5,216 billion, which was a 14 per cent increase compared to the previous year. This has been the highest growth rate since 1998.
‘Opel and its parent company are strengthening the Hungarian economy based on the expertise and efficiency of the Hungarian labour force using state-of-the-art technology,’ Péter Szijjártó said.

U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Colleen Bell commented that, since taking up her post a month ago, she had visited numerous American companies active in Hungary, where she experienced the positive investment environment of the country and the excellence of Hungarian labour force. In the Ambassador’s opinion, Hungarian-American economic relations are very stable.

According to Opel’s press release, the new training centre will provide training for about 100 students at any one time, as well as offer part-time training for another hundred students participating in dual training. The workshops will be developed for the education of automation technicians, cutting machine operators and electricians. At the same place, a practical training base will be opened for dual mechanical engineer training in Szombathely starting in the next academic year.

GM has invested a total of EUR1.5 billion in Hungary so far.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)