Uprising? Central Bank governor criticized government policy

György Matolcsy, the governor of the National Bank of Hungary, suggested the country’s economic development would be better served by an “economic policy centre with a mandate to achieve sustainable convergence” in the government’s institutional structure in an op-ed piece published online by daily Magyar Nemzet on Monday.

Matolcsy blamed “institutional weaknesses of economic policy” for Hungary’s “mediocre” performance in the region in an op-ed piece published a week earlier. In his Monday op-ed piece, he said

the government had taken “not the best decision”

but opted for “the path of least resistance” when it put a “tried and tested” finance ministry in an economic policy role.

“The price of this [decision] was a collision of the economic policy centre with fiscal interests, in which short-term interests turn(ed) out to be the winner,” he said.

He added that there was no such contradiction while the economy ministry functioned — prior to the 2018 general election — because the “primary interest” of economic policy at the time was bringing the budget deficit under 3 percent of GDP. After that threshold was achieved, establishing sustainable convergence “became the main task”, he said.