Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary’s economy rebounded to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021, while the global economy is only expected to do the same by the end of 2022.
During his annual parliamentary hearing, the minister said the Hungarian economy has “broken one record after another” in the past two years. While 114 million people have lost their jobs worldwide due to the pandemic, and global investment volume plummeted by 42 percent, more Hungarians have jobs than ever before, he said. The country’s Q2 GDP growth was a record 17.8 percent, he said. Those achievements were thanks to the government’s consistent policy of cutting taxes, Minister Szijjártó added. State funding now goes towards preventing unemployment rather than financing it, he said. The government also used “temporarily lax” EU legislation to tie investment funding to companies that retain their employees, he said.
The minister said this year has seen agreements concluded on a record 57 investments worth a total of 4 billion euros. The government supported them with some HUF 200 billion (EUR 547.8m) in grants, creating 9,000 jobs, he said. Exports also soared this year, with the data of the first nine months showing 16 percent growth, bringing the export volume to 112 billion euros, he said.
The investment support program launched to offset the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic has seen HUF 373 billion in grants supporting the investments of 1,380 companies, worth a total of HUF 900 billion, Minister Szijjártó said. The measure has helped preserve some 290,000 jobs, making Hungary a successful competitor when it comes to the reshuffling of global economic capacities, he said.
Photo credit: MTI