The economic performance of rural Hungary depends fundamentally on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, the Ministry of National Development’s Parliamentary State Secretary said on Friday in Hajdúdorog.

In his speech at the inauguration of Agrosector Limited’s new premises in the Northern Great Plains region town, János Főnagy added that the Ministry of National Development’s most important objective is to give impetus to the development of domestic enterprises and ensure that the available funding serves the competitiveness of the country more efficiently.

The State Secretary noted that 73 percent of those in employment, over two million people, are today employed in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector.

The Government is doing everything in its power to support this sector and to decrease its administrative burdens, Mr. Főnagy said, pointing out that according to the Government’s decision 60 percent of the European Union funding made available to Hungary during the 2014-2020 financial period would be put towards economic development.

Mr. Főnagy announced that new tenders would be launched within the framework of the Economic Development and Innovation Programme over the next two months.

At the inauguration of Agrosector Ltd’s new fertiliser packaging plant, Deputy Managing Director of the Northern Great Plains Regional Development Agency Judit Berki said that during the past two years 1800 winning tender applicants from the region had been awarded a total of some 330 billion forints (EUR 1.05bn), 230 billion of which had already been disbursed. 3500 new jobs have been created in the region as a result, she added.

Managing Director of Agrosector Limited János Kujbus stressed that the company had been awarded almost 95 million forints out of the 190 million forint total cost of the project from European Union funding.