Interview – Orban: Economic growth is thanks to willingness of Hungarians to work
(MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the exceptional second-quarter economic growth data published on Thursday is down to the fact that Hungarians want to work.
Speaking in an interview to public Kossuth Radio on Friday, he commented on the 3.9 percent annual GDP increase, saying as long as people want to work such results would be forthcoming.
Orban said that since Hungary also belongs to a crisis belt, it is the job of the state to ensure work opportunities that the market cannot provide, and if needed several hundreds of thousands of jobs must be created.
The prime minister said that in 2010, 1.8 million employees paid tax in Hungary and now this figure has risen to 4.1 million. He added that this must be improved on, since many people were still excluded from the “labour-based society”. The goal is to have five million people working in Hungary, he added.
“We promised to create one million new jobs over ten years but now I see that we can exceed this; we can and must target a Hungarian economic model based on five million working people,” he said.
Orban said it was important for the Hungarian model that thinking should not run along the lines of a liberal democracy, but rather the state should create opportunities for work alongside private-sector job-creation.
He said he partially agreed with the western way of looking at things in that help should be given in the private sector for job-creation. But if there is a crisis, supplementary opportunities must be ensured. He said that the Hungarian model which is emerging is functioning well and producing results. The prime minister added that besides Hungary, the British are pursuing their own model and “they are performing very well”.
Orban said he counted on “good cooperation” with the European Commission being set up. He said there were those who wanted to “make Hungary into a black sheep” because “we openly admit that we do not want to build a liberal democracy based exclusively on individual interests, but a democracy which puts primacy on the public good.”
Hungary’s economy has grown at the fastest pace in the EU, Orban said, adding that the “political system based on the public good, which is democratic if not liberal, has brought about the desired result; it has brought about greater opportunities than has liberal democracy in many countries.”
Photo: MTI – Laszlo Beliczay
