The foreign minister said the Hungarian government is drafting a program to encourage Hungarian businesses to invest profits generated abroad in a capacity expansion at home.
Peter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told an event in Oslo organized by the Scandinavian subsidiary of Vajda Papir that the Hungarian company producing hygienic paper products had been present in Norway for ten years. He added that the company was a good example of how Hungarian companies were successfully expanding in foreign markets. In global comparison, Hungary ranks 95th in terms of the size of its population but it is 34th in terms of the global ranking of exports with 142 billion euros reported last year, he said. Companies that hit a glass ceiling in terms of exports must bring their production closer to their target markets, and the government supports projects to achieve this goal, the minister added. Minister Szijjártó said that in addition to increasing export performance, the difference between multinationals’ profits taken out of Hungary and Hungarian companies’ foreign-generated profits brought back home should be reduced. The two figures will certainly not be equal in the near future but it is important to improve the situation, he added. To help improve the situation, the government is preparing a program offering various incentives to encourage Hungarian companies to invest their foreign-generated profits in a capacity expansion at home, he said. In the past decade, Hungary has been able to emerge stronger from every crisis and it has good foundations to face a new era of the global economy, he said.