The foreign minister has highlighted how the Hungarian government implemented the largest investment support program of all time last year.
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said at the inauguration of an expanded packaging plant in Debrecen, in eastern Hungary, that a HUF 6.5 billion (EUR 18.6m) investment increased the capacity of Hoffman Neopac AG’s manufacturing plant, enabling the company to preserve 176 jobs and add another 25. The government supported the investment with an HUF 843 million grant, he added. “The value of investments grew by 10.8 percent in the second quarter of 2021, with investments currently totalling 1,700 billion forints nationwide,” he said.
The minister said economic development and environmental protection go hand in and in the government’s economy strategy. The Debrecen plant fulfils both requirements as it will manufacture tubes from recycled materials, he said. Another big project will involve a HUF 65 billion (EUR 185m) investment backed by HUF 13 billion of state support, creating 440 new jobs near Debrecen, in eastern Hungary. Chinese company SEMCORP is to complete a factory for manufacturing separator foils for lithium-ion batteries by the end of 2022. The minister said “trade winds are blowing from the East” in many modern industries of the new global economy, including the electric car industry. The new 97,000sqm plant will be SEMCORP’s first manufacturing unit outside China, representing a “new chapter in the success story of Hungarian-Chinese economic cooperation”, he added.