Hungarian foreign minister meets Russian minister of trade and industry

Budapest, February 2 (MTI) – Hungary and Russia will build an “even closer” cooperation in heavy industry projects with special regard to “technology-intensive areas”, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said after talks with Denis Manturov, Russia’s minister of trade and industry, in Budapest on Thursday.

The two governments will encourage Hungarian and Russian businesses to bid jointly for projects in third countries, Szijjártó said. For example, he mentioned a railway tender in Egypt, in which Hungarian and Russian companies have submitted a competitive bid.

Szijjártó said that Hungary’s Dunaferr offered “huge opportunities”. He argued that the Russian partner invested some 20 million euros in the steel works last year, while this year’s Russian investment could even exceed that amount. “Dunaferr’s continued operation and development is ensured,” he said.

Hungary and Russia will continue their joint space research programmes, with the Hungarian government contributing 200 million forints to that budget, Szijjártó said.

He also reported that the Hungarian government had decided on Wednesday to set aside 2.4 billion forints (EUR 7.7m) to restore four Russian Orthodox churches in Hungary.

Answering a question, Szijjártó said that the European sanctions against Russia have “failed both from political and economic aspects”. Those sanctions impact not only Russia but Europe, too, and “it would be best to remove them”, he insisted. Due to the sanctions, Hungary’s exports to Russia and the former Soviet states had dropped by 6.7 billion dollars since 2013, Szijjártó added.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI