Hungary’s 2025 budget aims for sustainable growth and increased support for families, businesses, and security

The government’s 2025 budget bill adopts a new economic policy that lays the foundations for lasting growth, Finance Minister Mihály Varga told lawmakers in parliament on Wednesday.

Presenting the budget during a plenary debate, Varga said the 2025 budget contained all of the resources necessary to increase further support for families raising children, strengthen businesses, protect regulated utility prices for households, preserve the purchasing power of pensions, guarantee the physical security of the country and to continue to defend Hungary’s borders from illegal migration.

He added that the budget could return the economy to the path of sustainable, high GDP growth while paving the way for dynamic wage growth and an increase in the purchasing power of incomes. He said the government aimed to create more jobs, as well as preserve the 1 million created since 2010. The budget bill assumes 3.4pc GDP growth and 3.2pc average annual invitation. It targets a general government deficit equivalent to 3.7pc of GDP.

Varga said more than 300 new investments, worth a combined HUF 8,100bn, would be launched next year. Those projects will pump HUF 480bn into the economy in 2025, he added.

He said funding had been boosted for all areas from a year earlier. He added that the more than HUF 3,750bn earmarked for support for families raising children was two-and-a-half times the amount allocated in 2010, at current prices. He noted that tax allowances for families raising children would double in two steps, from July 1, 2025 and January 1, 2026. Next year’s allocation for pensions will rise by HUF 655bn to HUF 7,200bn, he said. Since 2010, pension spending has increased by 25pc, adjusted for inflation, he added.

Spending on healthcare will rise by HUF 330bn to HUF 3,717bn, well over the HUF 2,520bn earmarked in 2010, he said. Education expenditures will climb by close to HUF 500bn to HUF 3,876bn, an 88pc increase over the allocation in 2010, adjusted for inflation, he added. Varga said public sector wages would continue to rise in 2025.

The 2025 budget bill targets payouts of more than HUF 3,000bn for European Union-funded projects and over HUF 2,100bn of transfers from Brussels, he said. Hungary will contribute close to HUF 700bn to next year’s EU budget, he added.

Fidesz: 2025 budget ‘will make Hungary successful again’

The adoption of next year’s budget will ensure that Hungary is successful once again, Fidesz MP Erik Bánki said in the debate on the 2025 budget bill in parliament on Wednesday.

The new budget, he said, would provide the basis for Hungary’s economy “to return to the dynamic and sustainable growth path” it enjoyed before the pandemic. The key aims of the government’s new economic policy action plan are to boost the purchasing power of incomes, ensure affordable housing and fortify Hungarian businesses, he said.

Further expanding support systems for Hungarian families was, he added, another priority goal. The budget bill targets annual economic growth of 3.4 percent and assumes inflation averaging 3.2 percent, while the budget deficit is expected at 3.7 percent of GDP, according to the finance minister.

The spokesman in the debate representing the opposition Democratic Coalition, László Varju, said it was doubtful that the proposed budget was either fully legal or sound, and he described it as a “Jack of all trades but master of none”.

He pointed to “massive risks” associated with the budget’s headline figures, insisting that targeted revenues would fall short.

Varju also accused the government of failing to tap EU funds, underestimating the forint-euro exchange rate, and omitting to take external factors into account regarding its growth forecast.

The DK politician further slammed the budget bill for not providing adequate financing for public services such as in the health and education sectors, though it raised the curtain for vast spending before the 2026 elections.

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