Subscribe to our social channels to get the latest news about Hungary!
Friends of Fidesz among the winners of the state land auctions
Change language:
József Ángyán, former state secretary for agriculture in the second Orbán-government made his report on land auctions public. This time, he examined the auctions in Pest county. Earlier he did so in the case of Fejér, Győr-Moson-Sopron, Somogy, Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén counties. Népszava summed up his latest report.
Small farmers did not have a chance at the auctions
According to Ángyán, the Hungarian government auctioned off 17,286 hectares of state-owned land. In fact, they managed to sell a bit more than 9,000 hectares. At first, it might seem that the number of winners (149) is high. However, if we take a closer look, it will become evident that 27 big business interests won more than 2/3rd of the land. The scheme was the same in all counties:
most lands were given to a few chosen winners while many received only small parcels.
In fact, 7,400 hectares (82% of the land) were sold without bid only for the upset price. This means that they were sold for only for 1.6M HUF (EUR 5,100) which is just a fragment of the average land price in the EU. Thus, government communication emphasising that state-owned land is sold for the price regulated by the market is simply not true.
Real competition happened only in case of 3-4% of the lands. The reason behind this fact might be that the auctioned parcels were so huge that their upset price was already hundreds of millions HUF. Thus,
local farmers could not join the so called competition,
because they could not pay the astonishingly high prices.