Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó opened the office of the Hungarian National Trading House in Santiago de Chile.
The Hungarian Minister held discussions with Minister of Foreign Affairs Heraldo Muñoz over a working lunch and also met Chilean businessmen.
Péter Szijjártó pointed out during a telephone interview with MTI that Chile is one of the most active participants of Southern American regional politics. Having concluded free trade agreements with 60 countries, Chile is one of the most open countries of the continent and the most integrated into the global economy. As he said, foreign trade is at the focus of Chilean foreign policy.
“Chilean economic openness and regional commitment combined with the “Opening to the South strategy” of the Hungarian government provide good opportunities to represent Hungarian economic interests in this cooperation”, the Minister stated.
He drew attention to the fact that there is global competition for an economic cooperation with Chile. He mentioned that China is Chile’s number one trading partner, and from the Eastern-Central European region, it was Poland that implemented the biggest investment of non-ferrous mining of its history. According to the Minister, if Hungary wants to be successful in this competition, it needs to rebuild its presence in time.
“Accordingly, we reopened our embassy in 2013. This has already yielded positive results; it is visible that physical presence is important since we increased Hungarian exports by 62 percent last year, which amounted to nearly USD 60 million”, he stated.
As he said, the objective of the recently opened Hungarian Trading House is to assist Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises to be successful on the Chilean market. Eximbank made available a credit line of USD 299 million to fund cooperation between Hungarian and Chilean companies.
Péter Szijjártó also reported that negotiations have started about the agreement on avoiding double taxation.
According to the Minister, the areas where the two countries can cooperate particularly well had been identified throughout the negotiations. He mentioned the sectors of energy, food industry, processing industry, information technology and mining. He added that in Chile, the world’s leading producer of copper with other significant mineral reserves, they are particularly interested in state-of-the-art Hungarian mining technologies.
Péter Szijjártó explained that Hungary is still committed to backing the renewal of the association agreement between the European Union and Chile as soon as possible.
He said that he had offered 15 scholarship opportunities for Chilean students at Hungarian universities.
Heraldo Muñoz granted Péter Szijjártó the Grand Cross of the Bernardo O'Higgins Order for his efforts made for the development of bilateral relations.
Head of Cabinet of the Director General for International Economic Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile and Head of the Department of European Affairs Alex Wetzig held a speech at the opening of the Hungarian Trade representation.