Speaking in Guatemala City, Peter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary and Guatemala together stand for Christian values and, the traditional family model in international politics, even if this goes against the liberal mainstream.
His visit, the foreign minister said, was an event of diplomatic history as high-level visits had never taken place between the two countries hitherto. He said Hungary was determined to pursue international relations based on connectivity and cultured, civilized cooperation, and wanted links between Hungary and Guatemala, too, to follow the same direction. Considering the great distance between the two countries, the securest basis for cooperation was interpersonal relations, he said, and an agreement enabling twenty students from Guatemala to study in Hungarian universities with a scholarship each year was in the pipeline, he added. Economic cooperation, he said, was increasingly active, with the annual value of trade doubling last year, reaching a record 7 million dollars, while growth in trade so far this year has been 19%. “The first Hungarian companies have arrived in the Guatemala market in the areas of health care, the food industry, and IT,” he said.