The European Commission put Hungary’s GDP growth at 1.8pc for 2025 in an autumn forecast released on Friday.
“Consumption is set to be the main growth driver with exports and investment expanding more gradually due to moderate growth at trade partners,” the EC said.
“Risks to the outlook include a prolonged weakness of demand in the automotive sector and a deterioration in terms of trade, which could weigh on growth and the current account balance over the forecast horizon,” it added.
The forecast is under the assumption for 3.4pc GDP growth in the government’s 2025 budget bill.
The EC puts average annual inflation at 3.6pc in 2025. It sees the general government deficit reaching 4.6pc of GDP.
Competitiveness ‘key issue’ for 2025 EU budget, says minister
Competitiveness is a “key issue” for the 2025 European Union budget, Péter Benő Banai, a state secretary at the Finance Ministry, said ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels on Friday. Hungary, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, takes the position that additional funding in the EU budget should be ensured for financing investments that contribute to an improvement in competitiveness, Banai said.
He added that the ministers at the ECOFIN meeting were tasked with allocating funding necessary for programmes earlier cleared by the EU heads of state and government and the European Parliament, without placing too great a burden on member states. He noted that interest expenditures on the EU’s debt were “well over” the European Commission’s preliminary calculations for 2025. That missing EUR 2.3bn-2.4bn is among the biggest challenges the ministers need to resolve, he added.
Bóka calls for ‘tangible’ achievements in wake of EU competitiveness declaration
In the next six months the European Union will need to present “tangible results” in wake of the competitiveness declaration leaders of the bloc adopted at their informal meeting in Budapest last week, the EU affairs minister told public broadcaster M1 on Thursday. “If we manage to do that … we will be able to say that real changes have started,” Janos Boka said. He added, however, that it would take “a lot of activities and conflicts … but Hungary has never shied away from such confrontations”.
The adoption of the Budapest declaration has been “a great step” towards the institutionalisation of European cooperation, Boka said, adding that the document defined the most important tasks in restoring the bloc’s competitiveness. He insisted that the “historic” meeting had been facilitated by “Hungary’s clear air and the result of the United States presidential election, which resulted in such a constructive dialogue as would have been inconceivable just a few months earlier”. “But the real work will start now, with economy ministers meeting in Brussels in late November, and adopting a conclusion detailing the Budapest declaration,” Boka said.
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