Minister: thanks to the “calm” foreign policy, Hungary could buy Eastern vaccines

Hungary’s government is hard at work to help generate the investments needed to achieve its target of an economic growth rate of 5.5 percent by the end of the year, the foreign affairs and trade minister told a conference on Friday.

In his address to the annually-organised Tranzit Festivál in Tihany, at Lake Balaton, Péter Szijjártó said Hungary’s crisis management measures were among the most successful in the world, thanks to which the country’s growth rate had now exceeded pre-crisis levels.

Industrial output, for instance, is now up 22 percent compared with 2019, Szijjártó said in his address streamed on Facebook. Hungary’s low taxes, flexibility and political stability give it an advantage in the global race for investments, the minister said.

The government has supported the investments of 1,435 businesses operating in Hungary with grants totalling 474 billion forints (EUR 1.36bn), Szijjártó said. The companies’ investments are worth a combined 1,700 billion forints.

He noted that instead of issuing welfare cheques, the government last year had worked to prevent mass unemployment. Altogether 4.7 million people in Hungary have jobs today, he said, adding that 1.14 million jobs had been lost to the coronavirus crisis on a global scale.