Hungary’s house speaker holds talks in China

On the second day of his visit to China, House Speaker László Kövér held talks with Yu Zheng Sheng, president of the National People’s Congress, and Chao Pai Ge, president of the Hungarian-Chinese friendship group of the National People’s Assembly, the parliamentary press chief told MTI on Friday.

Kövér praised the enormous development China went through in the past decades and said that the One Belt, One Way initiative coincides with Hungarian intentions to “open to the east”. He noted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had praised the stability of Sino-Hungarian relations, upgraded to a strategic partnership during his recent visit to China, Zoltan Szilágyi said.

Speaking of tourism, Kövér said that 170,000 Chinese tourists visited Hungary in 2016. Data of the first quarter of 2017 shows a 36 percent growth year-on-year, Kövér said. One factor in the tourism boost can be the direct Budapest-Beijing flight, which was restarted in 2015, he said.

China is Hungary’s tenth biggest trading partner globally and the biggest one outside Europe, with Hungarian export growing by 25 percent and bilateral trade by 8 percent last year. Due to the competitive environment created by the Hungarian government, Chinese investments in Hungary have reached 4.1 billion dollars, the press chief said.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI