“Hungarian exports continue to increase dynamically this year, growing to 100 billion euros by the end of this year from 71 billion in 2010, an increase of almost fifty percent”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Parliamentary State Secretary, Levente Magyar said at the Hungarian Export Day foreign trade event on Monday in Budapest.
In his opening speech, the State Secretary said that in 2010 the foreign trade surplus was 6 billion euros but had increased to 10 billion euros last year. “Hungary’s economy has been gaining strength since 2010: unemployment is currently the 4th lowest within the EU, the rate of GDP growth is amongst the highest, and the volume of investment increased by 25 percent during the first six months of this year”, he pointed out.
“The guest of honour of Hungarian Export Day is China, which is one of the most dynamically developing export markets. One of the priority goals of Hungary’s foreign trade strategy is to reinforce economic relations with China, and Hungarian exports to China have doubled since 2010, while the number of Hungarian enterprises exporting to China, four fifths of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, has increased by 50 percent during the same period”, Mr. Magyar highlighted. “The performance of the some one thousand Hungarians enterprises that are exporting to China must be further increased, and more opportunities must be created for them”, he added. The State Secretary also said that Chinese economic presence in Hungary had also increased significantly in recent years, with the total value of Chinese working capital investments exceeding 4 billion dollars in 2016.
CEO of Eximbank Zoltán Urbán said the institution was helping to boost exports with bank and insurance products. The joint fund established together with China’s export-import bank has paid out 500 million dollars in loans in Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Hungary during the past two years, he added.
Chinese Ambassador to Budapest Tuan Chie-lung stressed that relations between the two countries are excellent, and their economic and trade cooperation is extremely successful. Bilateral trade flow was 5.72 billion dollars from January to July of this year, which represents a year-on-year increase of almost 17 percent. Hungary is China’s third largest partner in Central and Eastern Europe, and Hungary possesses the largest number of Chinese import licences from among the countries of the region.
Ministerial Commissioner for the Digital Prosperity Programme Tamás Deutsch drew attention to the fact that the European economy needs a turnaround with regard to digitalisation, to enable Europe to be a real competitor to North American and the Asian economic areas. With regard to the export performance of its digital economy, the European economic area is slowly falling behind compared to the North American and Asian areas. A North American or Asian enterprises is involved in every major digital development project in Europe as a consortium leader or partner, he explained. Mr. Deutsch said that during the past two years Hungary has switched into high gear with relation to digitalisation, and the goal of the expanded package of government measures called the Digital Prosperity Programme is to increase the performance of Hungary’s ICT sector.
Hungary’s OECD Ambassador Zoltán Cséfalvy spoke about the fact that although the rate of expansion of global trade has been slowing down and has been low since the outbreak of the economic crisis, Hungary’s exports are increasing significantly. Global trade is increasing more slowly because of trade barriers and the transformation of global value chains, he explained. Among the Hungarian responses to this, he highlighted the fact that the majority of exports are specialised towards the markets of more advanced competitors, in addition to Hungary’s Eastern Opening and Southern Opening foreign trade policies. He cited new technologies, including artificial intelligence, the 3D printing revolution and digitalisation as the most important new challenges facing international trade.
Minister of State for Economic Development and Regulations István Lepsényi from the Ministry for National Economy highlighted the fact that 63 percent of Hungarian exports come from the processing industry, with over 20 percent of that derived from the automotive industry, and Hungarian exports are predominantly controlled by the industry. “The fundamental target of Hungary’s strategy is to increase the ratio of industry within GDP to 30 percent from its current level of 24 percent, for the role of other sectors of industry in addition to the automotive industry to also increase, and for the economy to be spearheaded by innovation. Further developing the economy’s flagship sectors, the health industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the ICT industry, the food industry and the green economy, is a priority”, he said.
Over 500 people took part in the Hungarian Export Day event, including 300 enterprises.