The finance minister said Hungary’s economy was one of the fastest to recover from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, with its output surpassing the pre-pandemic level in mid-2021, and its growth expected at 6.8 percent this year and above 5 percent in 2022.
Finance Minister Mihály Varga told parliament’s economic committee on Monday that unlike the global economic crisis of 2008, Hungary needed no assistance from the International Monetary Fund. This achievement was all the more remarkable as the global recession in 2020-2021 came to 3.6 percent as against 1.7 percent in 2008-2009. Hungary, he said, had successfully managed its debt amid the hardships of the pandemic, extending debt maturity from four to six years while ramping up domestic financing, with a quarter of public debt now in Hungarian hands, up from 3 percent in 2010.
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