In the Parliament building on Sunday, in a press statement following his talks with the Vice-President of India Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that what Hungary needs are investors like India.
The Prime Minister supported his argument by saying that Hungary has run out of workforce, it has succeeded in providing people with jobs and it shall soon reach a state of full employment. Therefore there is the need to continuously renew the technological standards of industry operating in Hungary. To achieve this, he said, the country will also need investment from India. He added that in 2014 and 2015 India was the largest greenfield industrial investor in Hungary, and the Asian country is planning further investments here.
As for bilateral relations, Mr. Orbán said that India is ready to jointly use Hungarian innovations, the products of Hungarian innovation and the results of Hungarian research and development, and to turn them to the countries’ mutual benefit. Therefore a technological task force will be set up with the mission of combining Hungarian and Indian capabilities in the field of innovation, the Prime Minister announced. He asked members of this task force to do their job rapidly and effectively.
He said that he believes that good cooperation opportunities exist in the arms industry, and that agricultural relations are also important. Cooperation between the two countries’ film industries will also be strengthened; therefore a film industry delegation will visit India in order to explore and make use of potential opportunities.
According to the Prime Minister, cooperation between the two nations stands on the strong foundation of both countries being democracies. India is the world’s largest democracy, he pointed out; the fact that one of the world’s oldest and wisest peoples is building its future on the foundations of democracy earns it our highest respect, and boosts our faith in democracy.
Mr. Orbán pointed out that in Indian political philosophy there is frequent use of the term “peaceful development”, which Vice-President Ansari also used a number of times during their meeting. The world is undergoing a major transformation, the Prime Minister said, and this simultaneously presents both an enormous opportunity and a threat. If the concept of “peaceful development” is enforced, however, it will serve the whole of humanity, he underlined. Mr. Orbán added that it follows logically from this that Hungary will support India’s efforts in international politics to obtain the representation it deserves in the new institutional framework which is currently unfolding in the world.
Mr. Orbán also said that Vice-President Ansari is an important guest because he is linked to Hungary’s freedom fight by his mentor, Mohammad Ataur Rahman; in 1956 the latter was India’s chargé d’affaires in Budapest. Now Vice-President Ansari is also representing this Hungarian-friendly policy here among Hungarians, the Prime Minister said. In addition to this, he added, Mr. Ansari is the son of a great family of freedom fighters, as members of the Ansari family are known in international politics as people who have always done their utmost for India’s independence and sovereignty.
Mr. Ansari called Hungarian-Indian relations diverse and friendly, and said that both countries are democracies with dynamically developing economies. As fields of cooperation he mentioned the arms industry, science and the film industry.
The Vice-President said that a memorandum of cooperation has been signed by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade in Hungary, and – in the field of water management – between Hungary’s Ministry of Interior and the Indian Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation.
The parties have agreed that terrorism must be eliminated; for this, global frameworks are needed. Finally, Mr. Ansari said that later he would meet President of Hungary János Áder and visit Corvinus University of Budapest.