“Just like in the automotive industry, it is also difficult to introduce new models within the economy; the Hungarian model, which has set full employment as its goal, is successful”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in Győr at the factory production launch of the new Audi TT Roadster.
The Prime Minister stressed that the restructuring of the vocational training system is indispensable because the country must have available a continuous supply of the highly trained professionals needed by enterprises. One of the prerequisites of a flowering economy is that we should provide our young people with a competitive profession, he added.
The Concern has had Hungarian suppliers since 1986 and was the first German company to “breach the Iron Curtain”, and according to the Prime Minister Audi did not want to take away Hungarian knowledge and talent, but instead understood that “we Hungarians want and are able to perform excellently here at home”.
The Prime Minister reminded the press that the German car manufacturer directly employs 11 thousand Hungarians, a total of 20 thousand families including its suppliers, meaning it provides a living for some 80 thousand people.
“Hungary is today inconceivable without Audi, just as the automobile manufacturing group is inconceivable without its activities here in Hungary”, Mr. Orbán stressed.
Chairman of Audi AG Rupert Stadler said that company would be introducing new models every few weeks, because the company is right in the middle of the second stage of its “model offensive”. The introduction of the Roadster represents the completion of a strategic megaproject, because production of the TT family at the Győr car manufacturing plant inaugurated last year was now complete, he said.
Mr. Stadler also mentioned that the number of people employed by the company had increased to 11 thousand from less than 200 in 1993, while the number of engines manufactured had increased by 110 times percent from the initial figure of 17 thousand, adding that the company would also be producing 160 thousand cars-a-year from now on, making it the second largest company in Hungary.
Managing Director of Audi Hungaria Motor Ltd. Thomas Faustmann spoke about the fact that the plant in Győr had begun as a small engine manufacturing unit 21 years ago, but by today had become the largest in the world, adding that the ratio of domestic suppliers involved in the value produced at the plant was some 60 percent.
According to Mayor of Győr Zsolt Borkai, the key to success was that in Győr, German knowledge and precision had met with Hungarian talent, diligence and creativity.