Orban: Economic performance best in over ten years

Budapest, February 16 (MTI) – Hungary’s economy has produced the best results in more than ten years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said today.

Giving a state-of-the-nation address in Budapest’s Millenaris Teatrum, Orban said that public utility fees had been cut for the first time in forty years. Employment and the minimum wage have increased and the rate of inflation has dropped to a level unprecedented for decades. The economy is growing and the government has defended and even increased the value of pensions. The budget deficit has been kept under 3 percent of GDP for years, he added.

Orban said the victory of Fidesz in the 2010 election brought about the second change in regime in twenty years.

For twenty years, the post-communist system was unable to prove its advantages over the old system and people “got fed up with it” so a second change in regime was required, he said.

“Hungarians had to be organised into a new national and political community through the adoption of a new constitution. Hungary’s sovereignty had to be restored, order re-established and an agreement struck with the public to guarantee a new and fairer system for the distribution of burdens,”

The primary goal of the government was to strengthen the community because the pledge to a successful Hungary was a strong state and a capable government, he said.

Hungary has arrived at the threshold of a great era of prosperity, Orban said, encouraging voters “to cross that threshold together”.

Hungarians should insist on “straightforward talk”, without slipping back to the “world of circumlocution” when “a blatant lie” was interpreted as a failure to “unfurl all details of truth”, Orban said, referring to ex-premier Ferenc Gyurcsany’s “lies speech”.

Orban said that Hungarians are slowly regaining confidence.

“We have become fed up with the politics that always focussed on how to please the West, the bankers and the foreign press,”

“I am still astonished at seeing how they take their courage to tell us what to think, how to remember, what goals to set and what to do and what not,” he said.