Hungarian construction sector output in August was flat in an annual comparison, the Central Statistics Office (KSH) said on Friday.
In July output had grown by an annual 3 percent, KSH noted. Output of the buildings segment grew by 5.5 percent, while civil engineering fell by 8.5 percent. In absolute terms, output came to 555.9 billion forints in August. The buildings segment made up 65 percent of the total.
Hungary’s construction industry is set to expand by 4.5 percent this year before slowing in 2023 and 2024, the minister of economic development told a conference in Budapest on Tuesday.
Over the coming year the government will be working to avert a recession, Márton Nagy told the event organised by national construction industry association EVOSZ, adding that this depended on whether or not Germany would slip into a recession. But the real question, he said, was how long and how deep a potential German recession would be.
Hungary’s construction industry is facing a squeeze from rising energy, labour and raw material costs, with financing becoming more expensive, while state investment projects are being postponed and consumer demand is declining, Nagy said. As regards rising costs, the minister said that while inflation was at 20 percent, the construction sector price index was over 30 percent.
He said the value of state investments peaked in 2020 at 3,500 billion forints (EUR 8.2 billion) and was expected to decrease to 2,700 billion forints, “a healthier level”, this year. Construction-sector projects make up around 60-70 percent of those investments, he added.
Meanwhile, he said the government expected some 17,000 new homes to be built this year. This is expected to fall to around 10,000 next year and decline even further in 2024, he added. Nagy said reform was needed in the housing market for the sector to return to 40,000 new homes a year in the medium to long term, as seen during the first government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
János Lázár, the minister of construction and investment, said the government has prepared a state construction investment draft law following consultations with 26 organisations. The government received 900 recommendations from the various organisations, most of which have been incorporated into the draft law, he said. The government will decide on the proposal on Wednesday, Lázár said, adding that it will be submitted to parliament before the end of the month.
The opposition Párbeszéd party is submitting a bill to MPs on stopping any further government priority investments and repealing the relevant law, arguing that such investments often harm the environment, as well as ignoring local government building regulations and monument protection rules.
Since 2010, almost 3,000 priority investments nationwide have received permits, Párbeszéd’s co-leader, Rebeka Szabó, told a press briefing on Sunday.
She said the investments which failed to take the interests of locals into consideration were a boon to people in ruling Fidesz circles.
Párbeszéd complained of “monstrous concrete” developments such as the one to revamp Bosnyák Square in Budapest against which a signature drive has been organised.
Featured image: illustration.
According to the plans of the Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Zrt. (Hungarian Concession Infrastructure Development PLC), we can expect 272 kilometres of new highways in the next 11 years. The company took over the operation and maintenance of 1,237 kilometres of expressways from the Magyar Közút Nonprofit Zrt. (Hungarian Public Roads) on the 1st of September.
During the 35 years long concession period, the Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Zrt. will maintain 1,237 kilometres of already existing expressways and expand the network by 272 kilometres in the first decade.
The plans include the construction of the M81 road, aimed to relieve the traffic load on the M0. It will be 102 kilometres long, from Komárom to Sárbogár, touching Székesfehérvár too. This route will continue under the name M8 from Sárbogárd to Kecskemét, 76 kilometres, crossing paths with the M6 road.
Read alsoThese are the most dangerous roads in Hungary
The company will finish the construction of the M3’s 31-kilometre-long section between Vásárosnamény and Beregdaróc, reaching the Ukrainian border. According to the plans, the entire length of M4 should be completed while the last part to be built is a 61-kilometre-long road connecting Kisújszállás and Berettyóújfalu.
During the next 11 years of the development period, the company will construct hundreds of bridges, over- and underpasses. They will renovate 538 kilometres of highways, and add new lanes on 237 kilometres.
According to the contract, the Hungarian state will renovate part of the expressways the company took over. By the end of the construction, the Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Zrt. will maintain 1,670 kilometres of expressway network. By the end of the concession period, the company returns a fully renovated and guaranteed road network to the Hungarian state. The costs of the work are moderate compared to the availability fee of the M5-M6 motorway. While in the case of the new construction, this means spending 230 billion forints (EUR 572,351,365.77) next year. The M5 and M6 will cost taxpayers a total of 151.3 billion – writes Világgazdaság.
Read alsoFrom today, the parking system in Budapest will be completely overhauled
A 5 percent preferential VAT rate for home construction which has been extended until the end of 2024 could be applicable up until December 31, 2028 provided that construction begins by 2024, Finance Minister Mihály Varga said on Tuesday.
The preferential VAT rate saves taxpayers 200 billion forints (EUR 487.4m) a year, Varga said on Facebook.
The extension of the preferential VAT rate until the end of 2028 has been initiated by construction industry association ÉVOSZ (Építési Vállalkozók Országos Szakszövetsége), the minister said. According to ÉVOSZ’s proposal, the VAT rate should remain applicable if a home building permit is approved by the end of 2024 or if construction on the home in question begins by then, he said.
The finance ministry has examined and approved the association’s request, Varga said, adding that the proposal could go before parliament in the autumn.
As we wrote earlier, Hungary has the highest house price growth in Europe, read more HERE.
Using augmented reality, you can enter the world of the under-construction M5 metro line with a unique app! FŐMTERV Zrt. has created a phone application that allows anyone to explore the M5 metro line in Budapest that is still well under construction.
In the app, users can travel the line virtually, using Augmented Reality (AR). The aim of FŐMTERV is to show the secrets of the project to a wider audience, reports Index.
“It is a perennial difficulty for us to present the future facility in a credible way to a public that cannot read the technical plans, and to ask for their opinion. The visual plans help a lot in this, but the reality will always be a little different,” said Tibor Keszthelyi, President and CEO of FŐMTERV Zrt. to Magyar Építők about why this application is necessary.
The app has several functions that allow the user to travel along the M5. One can even look inside the tunnel under construction and track the current position of the tunneling shield underground!
“We hope that the app we are launching will be easy to understand and use for all interested users, and will quickly become popular with them. Its success is important for the whole engineering profession, as the application will make the complexity of engineering tangible,” added Keszthelyi.
Thanks to the development of the M5 metro, the HÉV in Csepel and the HÉV in Ráckeve will be interlinked and will run to Kálvin Square via Boráros Square. The first step in the project is the introduction of the H6 and H7 lines from Ráckeve to Kálvin Square in a deep tunnel from Közvágóhíd: this tunnel will reach its maximum depth of 50 metres at the terminus at Kálvin Square. That is, it will run under the 38-metre-deep Metro 4. In a second step, the Szentendre, Csepel and Ráckeve lines will be connected by a tunnel under the Danube, creating Metro 5.
You can download the application on your Android device HERE and your Apple device HERE. The application is available in English and Hungarian.
Check out these amazing visual plans of the M5 metro line below!
Output of Hungary’s construction sector grew by an annual 9.9 percent in May, accelerating from a 3.2 percent increase in the previous month, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Friday.
Output of the buildings segment grew by 12.0 percent and civil engineering output rose by 7.7 percent. In absolute terms, construction sector output reached 551.2 billion forints (EUR 1.3bn) in May. The buildings segment accounted for 62 percent of the total.
Month on month, construction sector output rose by 5.8 percent, adjusted for seasonal and workday effects. For the period January-May, construction sector output increased by 11.5 percent year-on-year.
The investors of a construction project at Lake Fertő, a protected area in north-western Hungary, have decided to terminate the scheme, a local opposition councillor of the Sopron city assembly said on Friday.
Adrienn Jakál, of the Párbeszéd party, told an online press conference that four years ago the investors had cordoned off the area and eradicated the natural environment. “But now it has turned out that there’s not enough money to complete the megalomaniac luxury investment,” she said.
She has called on Sopron Mayor Ciprián Farkas, Attila Barcza, the city’s lawmaker for ruling Fidesz, and Béla Kárpáti, director of the Sopron-Fertő Tourism Development Zrt, to inform locals about the lake’s future without delay.
In April, Kárpáti said that the project would cover 60 hectares and include
upgrading the beach, building a yacht port and a 12-hectare eco-centre with a building for events.
A campsite, a sports centre, apartments and a 2,500sqm hotel with fewer than 100 rooms would also be built, he said.
The construction phase of the Paks 2 nuclear plant may start in September, Péter Szijjártó, the minister for foreign affairs and trade, said on Friday, after talks with Rosatom head Alexey Likhachev in Istanbul, where he said all pending issues had been cleared in advance of the new phase.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that Rosatom was providing the documentation necessary for another four permits from the National Nuclear Energy Office (OAH) before construction can start. “If all goes according to today’s agreement, it is entirely possible that the next phase will start in September,” the foreign ministry quoted Szijjártó as saying.
The aim is for the two new blocks to start operating in 2030,
raising the plant’s capacity from 2,000MW to 4,400MW, he said.
“Hungary will take a big leap towards electricity independence; an enormous advantage at a time of irrationally growing prices in the global market,” Szijjártó said. “We won’t be as vulnerable to the hitches and crises of the international market as we are now, and much less than many other countries are,” he said.
European Union sanctions against Russia specifically exempt the peaceful use of nuclear energy from all restrictions, Szijjártó said. Accordingly, Rosatom is not on the EU’s sanctions list, he noted. Szijjarto also announced that Gergely Jákli, the former head of the Hungarian Eximbank, will take over as head of the Paks 2 company.
The project to renew Budapest’s Nyugati Railway Station had been awarded European Union funding, a state secretary at the Ministry of Technology and Industry (TIM) said after a meeting of EU transport officials in Lyon on Wednesday.
Hungary’s National Transport Centre (NKK) had been awarded EUR 2.8 billion for the upgrade of the Nyugati Railway Station, Dávid Vitézy wrote on Facebook. Meanwhile, he said a project to build new train stations in southern Budapest had been rated “excellent” by the European Commission.
However, since the environmental permit of the project was revoked earlier this year, a decision on its financing had been delayed until the time a new permit would be obtained, Vitézy said.
The state secretary called the project “the most important rail link between the eastern and western part of the country”.
According to the official EU evaluation of the tender submitted for the development of the Southern Circular Railway:
The main problem is that the Municipal Court of Budapest annulled the necessary environmental permits on 17 February 2022.
Budapest has already won EU funding for an environmental impact assessment of the Danube Rail Tunnel. In addition, the National Transport Centre won this grant in a competitive tender between the 27 EU Member States. The grant amounts to EUR 2.8 million.
The project is scheduled for completion in 2026-27.
This week on Monday, we reported that some roofing elements and a facade wall collapsed in downtown Budapest. Five cars were completely flattened, and several people were injured. The question remains: what caused such a catastrophe? Continue reading our article below to find out more.
The roof of a building collapsed on Monday morning around 9:45 AM in downtown Budapest. The event took place in the 6th district of Budapest, on Jókai St. Most of the debris fell onto the street and the sidewalk. The police said that according to preliminary data, four people were injured by the falling debris. A police spokesman at the scene told Telex that there were three casualties with minor and one with severe injuries.
Index learned that another level was to be built on the roof of the building. This means that the event did not entail any renovations. Rather, the accident happened due to the preparations for the construction.
As it turns out, there was also a fire on the site a few weeks ago. This may have also weakened the floors. According to a safety inspector who spoke to the above source, the company employed by the contractor was not sufficiently careful. Practically no safety regulations were observed, and it led to flammable materials being placed on the roof.
A hearing-impaired elderly woman was rescued by the emergency services from the Terézváros property. The mayor of Terézváros was contacted by Telex about the issue. Mayor Tamás Soproni said, “The elderly woman did not sense anything from the collapse of the roof. This is why the emergency services helped her to leave her home.”
A couple was also walking on the street when the accident happened. Nikolett, a dancer of the Hungarian State Opera, and her boyfriend, Benjamin were both injured. The young man was interviewed by RTL.hu. He found his partner under the rubble, and emergency services had unfortunate news. Nikolett suffered grave head and spinal injuries.
Both of the young woman’s legs might be paralysed for the rest of her life.
The mayor said that the building had already started to be cleared of hazards. According to the ELMŰ Electrics, the power lines were not damaged, so the electricity is expected to be restored soon. The mayor will submit a proposal to the municipality for a one-off emergency grant of HUF 50,000 (EUR 125) per flat for the residents of the building.
The four-star, 50-room sports hotel will cover an area of almost 6,000 square metres. The new complex in Szeged will offer a large green space to its guests.
The contruction of the new four-star sports hotel in the beautiful city of Szeged will be carried out by Market Építő Plc. According to the plans, the complex will have 50 rooms, covering an area of 6,000 square metres. The building will have a ground floor plus two floors, with over 2,500 square metres of direct green space. Landscaping will include internal walkways and a parking area – reported by the Hungarian news portal Turizmus.
The ground floor will house a reception area, common areas, lobby, conference room, a 350-400-seat kitchen and restaurant, wellness facilities, terrace and a chapel. On each of the two floors, 22 standard rooms and one apartment will be constructed, as well as accessible and family hotel rooms, corridors and terraces. The attic will give place to various mechanical rooms and the roof garden – reported by Szent Gellért Fórum.
The Szent Gellért Forum Sports and Events Centre – soon to be complemented by Szeged’s new sports hotel – hosts various national and international sporting events, as well as a number of cultural and corporate events. Thanks to the project, the events centre will be able to offer a complex service to visitors and guests looking for sports and entertainment.
Meanwhile, there has been an agreement on the construction of two new five-star hotels in Hungary. At the beginning of this week, the Accor International Hotel Group and Hungarian tourism property development group Dreamland Holding made a partnership agreement to operate two new luxury hotels at Lake Balaton and in Tokaj.
Mövenpick BalaLand – a five-star hotel and theme park with 109 rooms – will be completed in Szántód at Lake Balaton, with an investment of EUR 50 million (HUF 20bn). It is part of a wider project that includes indoor and outdoor water parks and adventure parks, more than 5,000 square metres of indoor facilities (also operated by Accor) and 112 residential apartments.
The 100-room, five-star Minaro Hotel MGallery in Tokaj will be the region’s leading upscale resort and event centre. The total investment is worth EUR 28 million (HUF 11bn).
The hotels will open in the last quarter of this year – reported by Infostart.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe visited Hungary’s National Athletics Centre, under construction in the south of the capital, on Saturday.
The track and field stadium will host the 2023 World Athletics Championships. Coe, a middle-distance runner Olympic medalist, said he was
“very satisfied” with the organisation of the athletics worlds,
adding that everything is proceeding “according to plan”.
Coe is in Budapest for the World Aquatics Championships.
Output of Hungary’s construction sector rose by an annual 3.2 percent in April, slowing from double-digit growth in the previous couple of months, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Wednesday.
Output of the buildings segment edged down 1.2 percent, while civil engineering output increased by 11.4 percent. In absolute terms,
construction sector output was worth 426.8 billion forints in April.
The buildings segment accounted for 58 percent of the total.
Month on month, construction sector output dropped by 5.9 percent, adjusted for seasonal and working-day effects.
Noting the slowdown and signs of supply problems, Magyar Bankholding analyst Andras Hovath nevertheless warned against reading into 1-2 months of data from such a volatile branch of the economy. Full-year growth, he added, was likely to arrive at more than 10 percent, supported by home construction and renovation and a backlog of state orders. Contract values are at record highs, Hovath said, though the revaluation of existing contracts may have a large part to play in this. In the spring, contractors expected a rise in costs of 10 percent, and now 25 percent-plus is likely, he added.
(HUF 100 = EUR 0.2509)
The upgrade of Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant has reached another milestone: it has received the soil stabilisation permit from the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Saturday.
One of the most serious crises in the world is the energy crisis, Szijjártó said in a video on Facebook, adding that, in the coming years, it will be an advantage if a country is able to produce a substantial part of the energy it uses.
“We, Hungarians, are building the Paks nuclear power plant so that from 2030 we can free ourselves from all uncertainties of the international energy market, and we can maintain our utility price cut scheme in the long run,”
Szijjártó said.
The diaphragm wall construction permit (which has already been obtained) and the soil stabilisation permit are the most important prerequisites for the implementation permit of the project, Szijjarto said. After the latter has been obtained, “real construction work” can start, he said.
A new home for the Museum of Ethnography was inaugurated in Budapest’s City Park on Sunday. László Baán, the government commissioner for Liget Budapest, a project that aims to rehabilitate the City Park and transform it into a magnet for locals and visitors, praised the “genius” of the building’s architect, Marcel Ferencz, and thanked Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his personal support. “It’s good to be Hungarian,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the inauguration of the new Museum of Ethnography building in Budapest’s City Park on Sunday.
The Museum of Ethnography now has a “world-class” new home, Baán added. Museum director Lajos Kemecsi said the 150-year-old institution was getting a home “tailored to its own needs” for the very first time. On Monday, the new building will open its doors to the public.
Orbán noted that the government had decided, “in the midst of an uncertain and changing world”, to plough resources into culture, cultural spaces, museums and concert halls, the built environment and
“tidying up Budapest’s most beautiful park”.
“While everybody said it couldn’t be done, we have advanced, step by step, building by building, and on April 3, the Hungarian people confirmed that we did well…and think Europe’s biggest cultural investment should be brought to fruition,” he said.
“I believe we’ve been given a mandate to implement the full programme,” he added. The new building, Orbán said, aims to give the natural beauty of Hungarian folk culture a place to be revealed to its full extent.
“Our treasures have found a place that suits them,”
he added. He urged people to “find joy every day in being Hungarian” and said the new Museum of Ethnography building, “an outstanding example of Hungarian ingenuity and sense of beauty”, could support that endeavour.
Orbán said a nation’s culture is a “road sign” that shows “where we’ve come from and where we’re going”. If we “stray”, we may become “hopelessly lost” and, with time, may no longer know what we’re fighting for, he added. He said folk art is a “multiplier” of the importance of culture as it shows “what it is to be Hungarian and why it’s good to be Hungarian”.
Hungary’s ethnographic heritage “fills us with a sense of freedom”, he added. “That’s why we anticipate and stand up against those who want to control us, and that’s why we recognise trouble in time, if danger threatens our culture, traditions, our way of life, our heritage,” he said. Orbán said that
only Hungarians are capable of preserving Hungarian culture.
He acknowledged the beauty of the museum’s former home, opposite the parliament building, but said “its form did not suit its content” as the new building’s form does.
The museum’s new home shows that in a world where “block buildings and unimaginative office complexes are a dime a dozen”, something “unique” can still be crafted that “grabs one’s attention and lifts one’s spirits”, he said.
Addressing the opponents of the Liget Project, a scheme to transform the City Park into a museums island, Orbán paraphrased a Dakota proverb: “If you realise you’re riding a dead horse, then dismount”.
The new Museum of Ethnography will open to the public on Monday.
János Lázár, the candidate for minister of construction and investment, said in a hearing before parliament’s economic committee that his work would be to build the country so that Hungary should become the “best place in Europe by 2030”.
Lázár said he would make investment faster and more efficient and
make efforts to ensure that Hungarian architects get to prepare the designs and Hungarian companies carry out the construction work.
The government will decide what needs to be built and it will be the ministry’s task to oversee how they are built, he added.
Lázár said around 10,000 billion forints (EUR 26.3bn) worth of ongoing would fall in the scope of his ministry. He promised to prepare a new legal framework for state investment.
Rural Hungary will get more than before but Budapest will not get less,
he said. The committee supported Lázár’s nomination for the post with 13 votes in favour, one against and three abstentions.
Hungarian construction sector output grew by an annual 10.5 percent in March, slowing from an increase of 38.5 percent in the previous month, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Friday. Meanwhile, Hungarian industrial output grew by an annual 3.6 percent in March, slowing from 4.8 percent in the previous month, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Friday in a second reading of the data.
Building segment output rose by 10.6 percent, while civil engineering output was up 11.4 percent. Overall, construction sector output was worth 521.8 billion forints (EUR 1.36bn) in March, with the building segment making up 68 percent of the total.
Hungarian industrial output grew by an annual 3.6 percent in March, slowing from 4.8 percent in the previous month, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Friday in a second reading of the data. Adjusted for the number of working days, output grew by 4.2 percent. Month on month, output eased by 0.1 percent, based on seasonally and working day-adjusted data.
In January-March, industrial output increased by 5.5 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Output of automotive companies dropped by an annual 13.3 percent in March. The segment, which accounted for 22 percent of manufacturing sector output in March, continued to be challenged by the semiconductor shortage and supply chain problems, KSH said.
The detailed data show
output of the computer, electronics and optical equipment segment, accounting for 11 percent of manufacturing, increased by an annual 6.3 percent.
Output of the food, drinks and tobacco segment, which also made of 11 percent of manufacturing sector output, rose by 10.2 percent.
