On Monday afternoon the Prime Minister’s press chief Bertalan Havasi informed Hungarian news agency MTI that the main topic in a meeting between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and President of the International investment Bank (IIB) Nikolay Kosov at the Carmelite Monastery in Budapest was the transfer of the IIB’s headquarters to Budapest.
At the meeting the IIB leader briefed Mr. Orbán on the Bank’s activities and future plans.
Mr. Havasi said that at a meeting of the IIB executive board in December it was unanimously decided that the headquarters would be transferred to Budapest, and the Bank was given a mandate to conclude the related contract.
The Hungarian government’s position is that the transfer of the headquarters to Hungary will strengthen the role of Hungary and Budapest as an international financial centre. At present five supranational development banks have their headquarters in the European Union, but none of these are in the Central European region. This, it was stated at the meeting, means that the transfer of the IIB headquarters to Budapest represents an important step forward.
The International Investment Bank is an institution registered with the United Nations as a multilateral, intergovernmental development bank, the goal of which is to facilitate social and economic development, prosperity and economic cooperation within member states.