HungaryTrends – The week in business and finance

See below the main business and financial news from the previous week:

HUNGARIAN STUDENTS’ STARTUP IDEA TO HELP PEOPLE WITH FOOD ALLERGIES 

Yet another great startup idea has been developed, this time by Hungarian students. USchool, an educational program with a modern outlook, has launched a program to introduce students aged 16-18 to the world of business and project planning, to the basics of sales and marketing as well as to group dynamics. Read more HERE. 

BUDAPEST REAL ESTATE MARKET CONTINUES SKYROCKETING 

As we already reported, real estate prices have been growing in the Hungarian capital for years. According to Duna House, a Hungarian real estate agency, everybody should calculate with more than 1 M HUF (EUR 3,150) per square meter by 2020 in the downtown. Furthermore, the increasing demand can raise the prices even higher. This is because investing in real estate in Budapest becomes more and more attractive. Read more HERE. 

SELF-DRIVING CARS IN FOCUS AT HUNGARIAN-ISRAELI MIXED COMMITTEE MEETING 

Self-driving cars took centre stage at last week’s two-day meeting of the Hungarian-Israeli mixed economic committee, the minister for innovation and technology said at the meeting’s opening ceremony in Zalaegerszeg, in western Hungary, on Monday. Read more HERE. 

GOVERNMENT SUBMITS 2019 BUDGET BILL TO PARLIAMENT

Finance Minister Mihály Varga submitted the 2019 budget bill to Parliament. The bill shows total revenue of 19,580.1 billion forints (EUR 60.5bn) and total expenditures of 20,578.5 billion forints. Revenue is 4 percent over that in the 2018 budget. Expenditures are 2 percent higher. The deficit is targeted at 998.4 billion forints, 27 percent lower than the gap targeted for 2018. Read more HERE. 

CJEU ADVOCATE GENERAL SAYS MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM INFRINGES EU RULES

An advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said in an opinion that the establishment of a national mobile payment system and the exclusive rights granted to state-owned Nemzeti Mobilfizetési violates the European Union’s Service Directive. Advocate General Yves Bot said in his opinion that Hungary had created a national monopoly in the mobile payment services market.

HUNGARIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK JOINS CEFOF WITH EUR 10M CONTRIBUTION

The state-owned Hungarian Development Bank (MFB) announced its accession to the Central Europe Fund of Funds (CEFoF), a 97 million euro fund-of-funds initiative created by the European Investment Fund (EIF) in cooperation with the governments and national agencies of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia to boost equity investments in SMEs across the region. The MFB contributed 10 million euros to the fund. Read more HERE. 

GUEST NIGHTS SLIP 0.8PC IN APRIL

Guest nights at commercial accommodations in Hungary edged down 0.8 percent to 2,230,000 in April from the same month a year earlier, the Central Statistics Office (KSH) said. The date of this year’s Easter holiday, April 1, may have contributed to the overall decline in the number of guest nights. Travellers taking advantage of the three-day weekend would have spent two nights of their stay in Hungary at the end of March and just one in April, unlike in the base period, when Easter fell on April 16.

BANKING SECTOR PROFITABILITY DOWN IN Q1

Combined after-tax profit of Hungarian banks fell 11 percent year-on-year to 160 billion forints in the first quarter, data released by the NBH showed.

CONSTRUCTION SECTOR OUTPUT GROWS 14PC IN APRIL

Output of Hungary’s construction sector climbed 14.2 percent year-on-year in April, KSH said. Output of the building segment rose 7.0 percent and civil engineering output climbed 24.9 percent. Read more HERE.

Featured image: MTI

Source: MTI