Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó declared on Tuesday in Budapest that the high growth of the automotive industry is indispensable to reach the foreign trade goals set by the Hungarian government
The Minister said at the automotive industry conference organised by the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA): last year, a production value worth HUF 6651.5 billion was reached by the automotive industry in Hungary, which is 23 percent higher than in 2013. The exports of the sector grew by 21 percent and the number of employees in this sector increased by 15 percent, he underlined.
This dynamic growth is indispensable for fulfilling the three main goals of Hungarian foreign trade, namely that within the European Union, Hungary should have the highest contribution of the industry to GDP and export’s contribution to GDP, and that within Central Europe, per capita foreign direct investment (FDI) should be the highest here in Hungary, he argued.
93 percent out of all automotive products manufactured in Hungary was exported, almost half of the exports went to Germany; this shows that reliable and competitive products are manufactured in Hungary, Péter Szijjártó said.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that the importance of the sector is shown by the fact that most of the strategic agreements concluded by the Hungarian government – 19 out of 56 – were signed with automotive companies. Following the signing of the agreements, the companies affected increased the number of Hungarian jobs by 9,000, he added.
In his welcoming speech, Péter Szijjártó mentioned that similarly to other industries, there is very fierce competition for investments within the automotive industry; therefore, the government would increase the competitiveness of Hungary in three areas. On the one hand, 7,000 new workshops would be established in order to provide labour supply. In addition to this, they would like to increase the number of small and medium-sized enterprises that could become the suppliers of large investors, and this is why the government encourages foreign investors to expand their Hungarian activities, he said. The third area is industrial overhead cost reduction, where the goal is that Hungary should have the lowest energy cost in the industry in the whole of Europe, he added.
HIPA President Róbert Ésik said that the so called employment multiplier ratio has one of the highest values, - 2.35 in the automotive industry. This means that when 100 new jobs are created in the sector, then directly and indirectly 235 new jobs are created altogether. HIPA is currently negotiating 21 such automotive investments that if realised, would create 3,600 new jobs in Hungary, he noted.
Róbert Ésik added that HIPA had organised a "sectorial summit" for the second time this year, and the reason for this is the significant importance of the automotive industry within the Hungarian national industry; this sector accounts for 27 percent of the processing industry. Today, Hungary is one of the strongholds of vehicle manufacturing in Europe, the President of The Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency noted.
At the conference on Tuesday, the CEO of Bosch Hungary and the directors of Audi, Mercedes, Opel and Suzuki held an annual evaluation speech. Two parallel panel discussions are held in the afternoon: one about tyres and the manufacturing of plastic automotive products, and another about the production of engine components and car-body manufacturing and metalworking.
The uncut video of the event may be downloaded from the press room.