Orbán inaugurates flagship logistics base

Hungary has all the conditions in place to ensure economic success over the next few years, the prime minister said in Páty, near Budapest, on Tuesday at an inauguration ceremony of an international logistics centre operated by Hungary’s national industrial parks operator (Nemzeti Ipari Park Üzemeltető és Fejlesztő Zrt.).

Viktor Orbán noted that

the Páty investment for Swiss logistics company Kühne and Nagel, creating 160 jobs,

forms part of the government’s flagship industrial park development project, the largest such project in Europe.

The 5 billion forint (EUR 16m) Paty investment, together with a 17 billion forint logistics base in Hatvan, in northern Hungary, for German engineering giant Bosch, are privately owned but both have received state development funds, he noted.

“This is just the beginning,” Orbán said, noting that several other such industrial park projects would be implemented under the central “Modern Cities” development scheme in 13 major cities with the right of a country seat across the country in the future. The budget earmarked for this programme is 44 billion forints, he added.

Orbán said he was not a great believer in state intervention. “We’d better trust entrepreneurs and investors than our own bureaucrats,” he said, adding, however, that without state-backed developments, investors would stay away. The government’s economic policy has created “a climate” that attracts investors to the country, and the flagship scheme will also help to narrow regional economic gaps, he said.