Whoever will form a government in 2018, thanks to the measures adopted with a view to the reduction of bureaucracy, they will be able to serve the common good and businesses with a more competitive and streamlined State, Nándor Csepreghy, Minister of State at the Prime Minister’s Office said on Friday in Paks.
The Minister of State stressed before an audience of some one hundred and fifty business and political actors from the South-Transdanubia region at the 9th Regional Media Ship Forum organised by the newspaper Tolnai Népújság and the Hungarian Entrepreneurs’ Salon: 150 legal rules were amended in 2015 in order to simplify the procedural rules, and the procedural fees which have been abolished this year have represented savings in the magnitude of some ten billion forints for customers to date. These are expected to continue also next year in the same magnitude.
One of the measures of the reduction of bureaucracy is the reduction of the institutions which businesses are in contact with, he said. Out of the 4.2 million people in employment in Hungary today, there are 1.1 million state workers. “A system in which one quarter of employees work in state institutions cannot be competitive”, he stated.
He also said that it is likewise an important goal for the Government to enable Hungarian business actors to satisfy internal demand to the highest possible standards, and to have businesses which may emerge in the machine and construction industries as major economic forces. It is further an objective to have 5 to 10 major Hungarian businesses which are key players also by global standards in the pharmaceutical industry and in the field of IT.
“If we manage to achieve these goals, the Hungarian economy will be able to remain on a course of growth, regardless of the European community”, he said.
The Minister of State took the view that if a two-speed European community comes into being, „this is not necessarily a threat, but may be an opportunity” for Hungary. He pointed out that the European Union is in a state of crisis due to ageing and migration, and also from a technological point of view, and is unable to come up with common answers to these questions.
The Hungarian answer is that the Eastern-Central-European region may become the basis of the EU’s growth which, combined with the Balkans and Baltic States, represents a market of 200 million, he added.
He remarked: in terms of wages, Hungary and the countries of the region will not reach the Western-European pay standards for decades more, but “reaching those pay standards should not necessarily be our target; we should see instead whether we are able to create appropriate living standards”. The family housing benefit may bring a great many young people working abroad back to Hungary, and we may measure its results around mid-2017, he said.