How did Russian sanctions affect the Hungarian economy?

The natural gas price rose by 300 percent, while the price of electricity grew by 400 percent. The volume of exports grew, yet the balance sheet is negative by EUR 4.9 billion compared to last year. Just like with every country, the war in Ukraine caused a lot of trouble in the overall economic situation. But what are the details? How did sanctions against Russia affect the Hungarian economy?

According to VG.hu, Hungarian exports were growing in the first half of 2022. The problem is that imports also grew drastically. This means that the terms of trade worsened by a large margin this year. Experts say that this is due to rising natural gas and electricity prices. Hungary trades a lot more, but it still imports more than it exports, which has been the trend in 2021 and 2022.

Details

The most significant increase in imports was in the case of natural gas, oil and electricity. The price of these grew by 275 percent and 420 percent respectively. However, there was a significant 150-200 percent rise in prices in terms of instruments, oils, metallurgical products, cereals, vegetables and fruits.

In terms of exports, electronic items made up 28.9 percent and the car industry made up 18.6 percent of the total volume. A significant rise is observable in agricultural products. In this, the agricultural industry grew by 60 percent, animal husbandry by 31.2 percent and the food industry by 25.7 percent. Other industries brought the expected growth rates, only the manufacturing industry experienced a decrease in exports.