Hungarian foreign minister visits Serbia’s Vojvodina province

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó visited northern Serbia’s Vojvodina province, where he attended the contracting ceremony of the Hungarian government’s local economic development programme in Sombor (Zombor) on Tuesday.

In his address at the ceremony, the minister said that Hungarian communities should be helped to strengthen in their own homelands, while strong communities would withstand assimilation and build closer ties with their mother country.

The Hungarian government considers ethnic Hungarians as an asset, Szijjártó said, and also highlighted Serbia’s support for the Hungarian economic development programme for Hungarian communities in the region.

The programme is implemented in cooperation with Serbia’s ethnic Hungarian VMSZ party.

At the ceremony, contracts were signed with 197 bidders winning grants between 15 million – 150 million forints (EUR 48,000-480,000) each, totalling 4.2 billion forints (EUR 13.4m) to facilitate investments of 12 billion forints. Most of the grants are aimed at purchasing machinery or increasing the animal stock of farms, Szijjártó said.

Szijjártó added that earlier bidders in Vojvodina – 6,488 small and medium-size ventures and 23 large companies – had won a total 22.2 billion forints facilitating investments of 45 billion forints.

The Hungarian government started its Vojvodina programme with 50 billion forints, but the amount was later increased to 75 billion. In the 2016-2018 period assistance has been focused on projects in farming, tourism and promoting small and medium-size ventures, aiming to help young people prosper in their homelands.

Source: MTI