The people of Hungary have performed well in recent years and everyone would like to work with the kind of labour and invest in the kind of secure and calculable environment that Hungary has to offer, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday in Milan. The Prime Minister was attending the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which ended on Friday with the participation of 53 heads of state.
Mr. Orbán said it was an important lesson that everyone at the meeting had spoken about Europe and Asia as a contiguous area whose economy needs to be organised. “This is now a special interest for we Europeans, because the Asian economy provides a significant part of and power for the rise of the modern global economy”, he pointed out, citing the development of infrastructure, free trade agreements and joint investment programmes as instruments for the creation and reinforcement of this link.
The Prime Minister issued a warning to those who would like to introduce the crisis management models of other countries in Hungary. No two countries are the same, he declared, noting that while a Japanese model needs Japanese people, a Hungarian model needs Hungarians. According to the Prime Minister, the Hungarian model holds many similarities with the British model, but overall the task is not to apply each other’s models but the mutual linking of economies.
This is why he had held meetings with leaders from Singapore, Malaysia and Kazakhstan on freight transport and investment opportunities, the Prime Minister indicted. The goal of both the conference and the various meetings was the removal of any obstacles to these, he added, stressing that the bilateral talks had achieved several economic results.
On the subject of competitiveness, he emphasised that for instance discussions with Singapore had centred on bringing four significant investment projects to Hungary. “So we are not talking about them manufacturing at home and then selling the products here, but they will be investing here”, Mr. Orbán explained. He cited as examples the fact that many South Korean and Japanese companies are engaged in manufacturing in Hungary, which shows that the Hungarian economy is slowly but surely beginning to be competitive with even the production that occurs in Asian regions.
The Prime Minister also stressed that Hungary has some “historical advantages”, meaning increasing investment is needed in sectors of industry that are built on research and development. He said that physical labour, vehicle manufacturing and assembly, which provides a living for hundreds of thousands of people, are a good thing, but according to Mr. Orbán in the long term we must continuously increase investment in sectors of industry that are built on research and development and which create higher added value. South Korea, Japan and Singapore are now bringing factories of this kind to Hungary, he said, adding that one of the reasons for this was that the people of Hungary had performed well in recent years and everyone would like to work with the kind of labour and invest in the kind of secure and calculable environment that Hungary has to offer.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the fact that we should strive to conclude free trade agreements with every country. He described this as a slow process, but also stressed that “if we don’t begin doing it we will never finish”. The agreement signed with Korea is functioning well and the Singapore agreement is also moving forward nicely, he added.
Viktor Orbán told the press that at the Milan meeting, in representation of Hungary he had taken the standpoint that as many free trade agreements as possible should be concluded between the European Union and the countries of Asia. It will be possible to trade with and export to China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia if such activities are not punished by various taxes and duties, he noted, explaining that the various import duties on individual product groups must currently be lifted one by one. If these disappear then that will be good for everybody; it is a proven fact that the expansion of free trade throughout the globe would serve the interests of humanity, the Prime Minister stressed.
Mr. Orbán said it was certain that we must move forward in this direction, and that this would result in the creation of more jobs, a growing economy, a higher standard of living and prosperity. However, he said we should be cautious and compared free trade to the planning of a house: “it is nice to leave the window open, but the mosquito net has to be installed”.