4 February 2016, Tatabánya
Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is with great respect that I greet the Mayor, the region’s Member of Parliament and especially our kind host: greetings to President Tibor Veres and his associates. The reason we have come here today and were happy to accept the invitation from the factory’s owners is that we are celebrating a joint success. Of course it doesn’t hurt to acknowledge one’s place in the queue for the credit in this success story – this long, snaking queue at the gate to success. The Hungarian government perhaps only deserves a place somewhere halfway back in the queue; the company’s directors and workers must be mentioned in first place. The event that has brought us all here today is primarily a testimony to their success.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is sometimes surprising just how quickly the world changes. I would never have thought that nanotechnology would become an everyday process in producing flooring, and I would never have guessed that one day we would find ourselves talking about flooring which disinfects its environment just as naturally as we talk about disinfecting floors. When I was on “swab duty” during my compulsory military service I never imagined that the world could ever reach this level of development – I’m talking to the over-fifties among us: swab duty is when you have to mop up the barrack rooms and linking corridors.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the years since Miksa Grab and son established the parent company 111 years ago, this company has, I believe, survived everything from world wars through forced nationalisation to economic crises and its successful emergence from them. An abiding characteristic of this company has been the ability to recover from seemingly impossible situations. This has obviously been due, first and foremost, to its workers and directors, but we should perhaps also mention its researchers, because recovering from trouble was generally made possible by the development of newer and newer innovative processes and solutions. Today we can declare that over the last decade Graboplast has not only outgrown the Hungarian market in the field of sports and vehicle flooring production, but has also outgrown the European market: it exports its products to eighty countries on five continents. We are talking about a company whose performance is tested every single day: hundreds of thousands of dancers, sportspeople and passengers carry out quality control every single day.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am not exaggerating when I say that the investment project we are inaugurating today is yet another step by Graboplast towards there being a global Hungarian corporation. We are talking about more than 120 new jobs provided by a new factory. Every single job must be valued, and by Hungarian standards 120 is a large number, so we are in no way underestimating the significance of this project in that respect; but we are also looking beyond this and hope that this project will give much more to the Hungarian economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As I am sure you all know, the Hungarian government has set full employment as one of its goals. We want Hungary to be a place where everyone who wants to work can indeed work. We cannot help those who do not want to work.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I think it is especially significant that we are here in Tatabánya – and not only because I live just next door, twelve or thirteen kilometres away, and because the development of Tatabánya has always been important to our region. But leaving this bias to one side, I also see the development of Tatabánya as very important. I would not describe any city as providing a life of ease, but among ourselves we of course sometimes say that while it may not be easy to create a successful settlement out of Győr, Budapest, Debrecen or Szeged, it is still relatively easy. But let us see someone repeat that trick in Dunaújváros, Komló, Ózd – or even Tatabánya. Today we have reached a point when Tatabánya should no longer be included in the latter list; this is because Tatabánya has already succeeded in achieving this, which is testimony to the hard work of the city’s people and leaders. I well remember the time when, together with Székesfehérvár, Tatabánya was synonymous with industrial depression: when people reflected on how low the settlement had sunk from its previous heights they lost their will to live, and they racked their brains for how they could possibly escape from the situation. Today we can safely declare that Tatabánya is one of Hungary’s most rapidly developing cities, and although people generally still talk about the past, thanks to the Mayor and his colleagues Tatabanya is far from being the socialist industrial city it once was, and is much rather a city of the future. It is a city where soon we will not need to grapple with unemployment, but where the problem we need to solve will be a shortage of employable workers capable of high-quality work. In this we wish the Mayor much success and offer our full cooperation.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We have heard the figures: this has been a large development project and the Hungarian government has contributed 3 billion forints towards its realisation. It is important to note that this was not European Union funding, but support from taxpayer’s money: from the Hungarian budget and Hungarian taxpayers’ forints. We feel we have made a good decision, this money has gone to a good cause, and we believe that with the help of this funding Graboplast has made yet another step towards becoming a Hungarian global brand. It is in this spirit that prior to the inauguration ceremony I had a meeting with Presidents Tibor Veres and Péter Jancsó. We discussed how we might continue the cooperation between Graboplast and the Hungarian government. It seems to us that the company has set great goals for itself. It has set its sights on major goals and opportunities which are also important in the context of Hungarian industrial policy, and we have agreed in principle on several issues. So we will continue to support the development and further strengthening of the company – although of course we still need to negotiate the specific solutions and details; but today’s occasion has also been a good opportunity to successfully conclude several significant agreements going forward for the next few years.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Of course one does not accept invitations to events such as this in order to blow one’s own trumpet, but then again another school of thought says that praising one’s achievements is too important to be left to others. And so I must of course also mention that for enterprises to be successful, the Hungarian economy must also be successful. Graboplast will also achieve success more easily – or perhaps can only achieve success – if Hungary is not unsuccessful, but is part of a great European success story, just as Graboplast is part of a Hungarian success story. This is why I mention that in recent years we have, as you know, had to do some very hard work: we have had to put the finances of the Hungarian state in order and restructure the tax system, so that it supports work and production; we have had to restructure the Labour Code, which now makes trained workers available to employers within a rational framework; and we have had to pay off the debts of local municipalities, taking hundreds of billions of forints off their shoulders. As a result of these reforms, in Hungary today the number of people in employment now exceeds four million, and all four million of those people are also taxpayers. I will very quietly mention that prior to 2010 there were only one million eight hundred thousand taxpayers in Hungary, and it is easy to calculate that it is impossible to support a country of ten million people from the tax forints of only one point eight million taxpayers; that is something which can only end in bankruptcy and collapse, and so the fact that the number of taxpayers now exceeds four million is a huge success. And as far as employment – or rather unemployment – goes, we are in the eighth best position in the European Union. And it will perhaps not seem immodest – because this is something which everyone agrees on – if I say that Central Europe – and not only Hungary – faces a huge opportunity of practically historic proportions,. Most recently, Harvard University’s growth forecasting institute published a report showing that in the coming period Central Europe will be one of the frontrunners on the global growth map. So we Hungarians live in a place, in a region which over the next ten years will be among the world’s most rapidly developing regions. From a European perspective this means that the engine of the European Union’s economic growth will be here in Central Europe, and this presents Hungary – and within it Graboplast – with a great opportunity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
To make best use of this opportunity we must further reinforce our already developing national industry, because although trade occurs at a global level, parallel to this the role of national capital is also growing in importance. The conclusion to be drawn from the 2008 financial and economic crisis is that when things go well the world economy is global, but when they go badly then it suddenly becomes local. And so if a country wishes to feel secure, if it wants to stand on a solid footing, then it must have significant domestic industry; Hungary cannot simply be an arbitrary location for large multinational companies.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
For precisely this reason the Government of Hungary has to date supported national capital, and will continue to do so. This is especially true in the case of companies such as Graboplast, which manufactures highly exportable products because, in view of Hungary’s size, the path to success leads through exports. And so in the future we will continue to provide special support to exporting companies via our various economic development programmes. We are careful when it comes to figures because in an economy one should not set goals in an authoritarian manner, but perhaps you are aware of one of our targets. Sometime around 2010 the number of small and medium-sized enterprises – and later large companies – which were capable of achieving a significant level of exports was somewhere around two or three thousand. Today that number has increased to between four and five thousand – indeed I believe that the figure is somewhat closer to five thousand. And our analysis shows that in order for the Hungarian economy to be permanently successful we need to have around twelve thousand such enterprises in the coming years. This is something that doesn’t happen by itself, and of course spontaneous market processes cannot be created through state instruments, because it requires talent, performance, working capacity and competitiveness; this is something which governments cannot provide – it is an ability which people must possess. It may require capabilities related to talent, but in Hungary five, six or seven thousand export-capable enterprises cannot just spring up from the ground without governmental help. And accordingly, the Hungarian government must be prepared to create rational partnerships with such enterprises.
This is why I would like to close by saying that Hungarian industrial policy is counting on Graboplast, and that Graboplast can count on Hungarian industrial policy and on the Hungarian Government. In the upcoming period we will be making a total of twelve thousand million forints in foreign and domestic, national and EU funding available to Hungarian enterprises. And Graboplast has a good chance of becoming involved in this programme to a significant extent. In relation to this I would also like to say that for the current Hungarian government industrial policy is a national issue. I am convinced that good industrial policy cannot be conducted on a party political basis; good industrial policy can only be conducted on a national basis. Even simple common sense tells us that, although it is made up of parties, a government cannot behave like a dog in a manger. This would be a recipe for bad industrial policy. Good industrial policy creates opportunities and gives everyone a chance and, where talent, performance and a chance of success show themselves, it opens doors, creates partnerships, signs contracts and concludes long-term agreements. I very much hope that the cooperation which has developed between Graboplast and the Hungarian government will continue in the period ahead. My congratulations to every worker at the plant, to the director and the owner, and I wish you all much strength and good health!
Thank you for your attention.
(miniszterelnok.hu)
