South Korean battery parts manufacturer to expand in Hungary

Countries drawing investments of electric car manufacturers will be the “winners” of the new economic world order, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said on Friday.

Announcing the expansion of a plant of South Korean Sang-A Frontec, which manufactures plastic parts for electric car batteries, Szijjártó said South Korean companies are the fourth largest group of investors in Hungary. Bilateral trade jumped by 37 percent last year to nearly USD 7 billion, he said.

The HUF 10 billion (EUR 26.7 million) investment in Szada, near Budapest, has received a HUF 1.4 billion in government grant, and will create 55 jobs, he said.

Agriculture Minister: Rural Hungary undergone huge development since 2010

Thanks to the governance of Fidesz, Hungary’s rural areas have undergone progress since 2010 that “everyone should see”, Agriculture Minister István Nagy said on Friday, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Budapest.

Nagy said the government had to “eliminate the anti-countryside leftist political legacy” which brought a dearth of jobs and resulted in the people moving away from rural areas and farmland falling into the hands of foreigners, and in the “dismantling of the food industry”.

After coming to power in 2010, Fidesz “set Hungarian rural areas on a growth path: it adopted one of the strictest land laws in Europe, and protected, and will always protect, the interests of Hungarian farmers,” Nagy said.

Strengthening the agriculture and rural areas bring about the prosperity of the whole country, he said.

Secure food supply is a matter of strategic and national security, as proven during the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, he said. Hungary is currently able to supply twice its population with fresh, safe food, he said.

The government is working to establish a society based on a “functional division of labour” between cities and rural areas, he said.