25 January 2016, Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар)
Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Excellency, Prime Minister,
The truth is that our hearts have brought us here, but this does not mean that we are the enemies of our own pockets. So we expect this meeting to not only intensify the friendship that exists between our two nations, but to also yield good business cooperation. In fact, we have come back here: there was a difficult period in the history of the Hungarian economy when, in the midst of a deep crisis, we were compelled to close our embassy here. But we have now recovered from that difficult situation, we have reopened our embassy here and returned to Mongolia; and I have come here with a business delegation of fifty who are all representatives of successful Hungarian businesses and are looking for cooperation with your companies here. We believe that today we see a meeting between two successful countries. I wish to congratulate the Honourable Prime Minister on the fantastic course of development and growth which Mongolia has completed in the last few years. I would like to tell you that the performance of the Hungarian economy can also be described as outstanding by European standards. So the only question is whether each of us will be successful independent of each other, or whether we shall also share in joint achievements. My impression today is that the Prime Minister and Government of Mongolia have an interest in achieving joint Mongolian and Hungarian goals. I therefore welcome the agreements which we have signed just now. I am pleased that we have succeeded in opening a credit line of USD 25 million with the Hungarian Eximbank for the refurbishment of a biomanufacturing facility here. I believe that there is scope for Hungary to provide assistance in exploiting the export opportunities arising from veterinary health care here. I also believe that there is scope for strengthening cooperation between the two countries’ young people. We are proud that to date four hundred young Mongolians have graduated from Hungarian universities. Also at this point in time, one hundred Mongolians are studying in Hungary with Hungarian state scholarship grants, and we would like to double this number. I wish to thank the Prime Minister for adopting a positive approach to this proposal. We have a department specialising in Mongolian culture at one of our universities, of which we are proud. We are proud that we cultivate and teach Mongolian culture and the Mongolian language at a department which we shall not only maintain, but intend to extend and develop. At the same time, we would also like to reinforce the presence of Hungarian culture here, in Ulaanbaatar, at some point in the future. On the whole our talks have been highly successful; they have been extremely effective, sincere and open, and they have encouraged business actors to work towards joint economic goals.
Thank you