In an interview given to local station Kapos Television on Friday, the Prime Minister stated that it takes more development in Kaposvár to achieve “one unit” of result than in several other cities in the country.
Viktor Orbán gave the interview after signing an agreement that day with Mayor Károly Szita (Fidesz-KDNP) on government development grants for the city worth HUF 122 billion. The Prime Minister said that an important change compared with earlier times is that now politicians do not want to centrally dictate what developments the city should implement. County-ranked cities are now strong enough to have their own economic development programmes, “and we seek to be partners in this”. This is much more of a partnership than some sort of hierarchical relationship, he added.
“I have signed an agreement, and I shall keep to it”, Mr Orbán said, but in order to complete it, it will be necessary to work relentlessly towards reducing state bureaucracy, using resources economically, and keeping the economy operating well through a system of taxation which encourages entrepreneurship and performance, “because if the economic foundations do not exist, our desire for civic consolidation will be in vain”. As to whether the development funds allocated to Kaposvár in the agreement are too much or too little, the Prime Minister said that in the city’s history no guaranteed and contracted funds of this magnitude had ever before been made available at one time. Regarding the sum itself, he said that it is a lot of money, and “it is otherwise a realistic amount”. The Prime Minister believes that the city must be given the chance to develop, and “it takes more development here to achieve one unit of result than in several other cities in the country”. In response to the remark that during his visit to Kaposvár a year ago the Prime Minister had promised that Route 67 would be built by the end of the government cycle, Mr Orbán said: “I have promised this several times, and I would now like to get down to seeing it done”. Regarding the completion of the road project, he said that “last time we undertook to complete it by 2018 – that may be a tight schedule, but the construction works will be finished by 2019 at the latest”.
Concerning the demand for express roads, the Prime Minister said that Hungary is still carrying the heavy burden of communism. There were many missing developments which should have been completed within a very short time. “We completed a great many things, and we Hungarians can be proud of the performance over the past 25 years, but we still have some shortcomings, and this is one of them”, he added. Mr Orbán said that as too many primary roads are missing, but there are insufficient funds to build them all, the Government is now building secondary roads, with a view to possible future upgrading and enlargement.
Mr Orbán described Kaposvár’s employment figures – there are almost 1,700 more people in employment now than three years ago – as a remarkable performance, but he added that there are still more than two thousand people without jobs. “We would like to live in a country in which with a clear conscience we could tell everyone that there are job opportunities: ‘If you want to get on in life, you can work’”, Mr Orbán said.