In his remarks, which he delivered while visiting Germany as part of the prime minister's delegation, the minister said that Germany has been Hungary’s number one trade partner, which accounts for 27.3 percent of the total volume of Hungarian exports and 26 percent of imports.
Companies partly or wholly owned by German enterprises employ more than 300 thousand people in Hungary, and Germany has also been the largest investor in the country. FDI from Germany has totalled some 6.5bn EUR since 2010, and more than fifty German enterprises have either opened a new production unit here or increased production capacity, he added.
Minister Varga, commenting on a recent survey conducted by the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, noted that one of the survey's key findings was that the so-called investor confidence index, which combines companies’ predictions of the country’s economic outlook as well as that of the enterprise, showed significant improvement, rising from last year’s 10 points to 18 points.
The optimism of German companies reflects the economic achievements of recent years, Minister Varga said. The Hungarian government had had to implement reforms that have fundamentally transformed key elements of the Hungarian economy, including pension and tax reforms, tighter fiscal management and a serious campaign to fight the grey and black economies.
“These changes – besides reaching the expected results – have also gained investor confidence,” the Minister said. This signals further improvement in terms of Hungary’s capacity to attract capital and the increasing power of old investment to generate new ones, he emphasized.