World Bank: Hungary business environments competitive with rest of EU
Hungarian cities outperform the European Union average in a number of areas of doing business, according to new a report by the World Bank presented in Székesfehérvár, in central Hungary, on Tuesday.
The report entitled Doing Business in the European Union 2017: Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, which was presented by Thomas Bender, a head of unit at the European Commission, surveyed the business environments of 22 major cities in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. It focused on five areas: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property and enforcing contracts.
It found that the Hungarian cities involved in the study outperform the EU average in property registration and commercial dispute resolution but lag behind in areas like starting a business or receiving construction permits. The study surveyed seven Hungarian cities: Budapest, Debrecen, Győr, Miskolc, Pécs, Szeged and Székesfehérvár.
Hungarian cities hold the top spots in four of the five categories in the current study, Bender said.
Budapest lags behind the other six Hungarian cities in all five categories, according to the report. The only category in which Hungary trails Bulgaria and Romania is the costs of starting a business, which in Hungary are nearly double the EU average. But Bender said there are five Hungarian cities among the world’s fifteen best at enforcing contracts.
Cecile Fruman, director of trade and competitiveness of the World Bank Group, noted that the organisation’s latest global economic report projects a global economic growth rate of 2.7 percent for 2017. Hungary’s economy is projected to grow by 3.9 percent this year and by 3.6 percent in 2018, she noted. Fruman said these projections were “fragile” as there are a number of uncertainty factors such as deteriorating demographic indicators, slowing productivity and a weak performance by state institutions.
The complete report in English: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/150581478855572643/Doing-business-regional-profile-2017-European-Union-EU
World Bank forecasts Hungarian GDP to grow 2.6 pc in 2017
Budapest, January 11 (MTI) – Hungarian economic output is expected to grow by 2.6 percent this year, the World Bank Group has said, upping its forecast of 2.4 percent made in June 2016.
In its Global Economic Prospects report, the World Bank said a recovery in public investments, including the infrastructure projects financed by EU funds, would aid growth, which could accelerate to 2.8 percent in 2018 before easing to 2.7 percent the following year. The 2018 projection was revised up by 0.5 percentage points.
In 2016, Hungary’s output is likely to have grown by 2.1 percent, the bank said. This is half a percentage point slower than earlier forecast.
The Economy Ministry said in December last year it expected GDP to grow by 2.1 percent in 2016 before jumping to 4.1 percent this year and to 4.3 percent in 2018.
ICSID obliges Hungary to pay damages to French voucher company
The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has ordered the Hungarian state to pay the French voucher company Edenred an award of approximately 23 million euros, globenewswire.com reported, citing a statement by the French firm.
Edenred and two other French voucher companies sought compensation from Hungary at ICSID in 2013 for the restructuring of the country’s voucher system.
Hungary introduced a unified national voucher system in 2012, in effect squeezing out existing market players.
According to Edenred’s statement, the decision represents an important step in the process of solving the dispute.
What we know about Edenred
Edenred, which invented the Ticket Restaurant® meal voucher and is the world leader in prepaid corporate services, designs and manages solutions that improve the efficiency of organizations and purchasing power to individuals.
By ensuring that allocated funds are used specifically as intended, these solutions enable companies to more effectively manage their:
Employee benefits (Ticket Restaurant®, Ticket Alimentación, Ticket CESU, Childcare Vouchers, etc.)
Expense management (Ticket Car, Ticket Clean Way, Repom, etc.)
Incentive and rewards programs (Ticket Compliments, Ticket Kadéos, etc.)
The Group also supports public institutions in managing their social programs.
Listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange, Edenred operates in 42 countries, with 6,300 employees, 660,000 companies and public sector clients, 1.4 million affiliated merchants and 41 million beneficiaries. In 2015, total issue volume amounted to €18.3 billion.
Ticket Restaurant® and all other tradenames of Edenred products and services are registered trademarks of Edenred SA.
You can read Edenred’s statement HERE.
Surprising data – the amount of money sent home by immigrants
According to napi.hu, a surprisingly large amount of money was sent back home by immigrants, even from Hungary. Here is every detailed information including some surprising statistics. Interactive map is included.
According to the United Nations data, there were 244 million people living in the world in 2015 who left their homeland to try their luck elsewhere. The number of these people is significantly growing; there were only 150 million registered people like this in 1990, and a 41% increase has occured since the 2000s.
While the degree of foreigners in the total population used to be only 2.8% worldwide, it increased to 3.3 by 2015. The majority of the foreign immigrants live in the US: more than 12 million came from Mexico. Europe leads the list in terms of continents with 76 million people; 12 million out of them settled down in Germany.
Graphics: napi.huIt is important to emphasise that they are not the refugees ,who left their countries because of persecution, armed conflict, violent clash or the contravention of human rights. They moved in the hope of a better life and job possibilities, and therefore they got the chance to send some money back home.
According to the World Bank, this amount is USD 580 billion mostly from the US. World Economic Forum claims that this money has a very big impact on countries of origin; the amount sent to Egypt is four times more than the money they can levy from Suez Canal, while in Nepal it is the same as the one third of their GDP.
Hungarian results
According to the statistics, there were 450,000 foreign people living in Hungary, the majority –about 200,000 – from Romania. Only 40,000 Serbian and 30,000 German and Ukrainian choose Hungary as their new home.
According to the United Nation’s data, there are at least 10,000 Chinese people in the country , there are populations over 10,000 from nations that we never thought of, such as Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, South-Korea and Japan. Hungary is not so popular among South-American people; no nation could be found with at least a thousand of people living in Hungary.
According to the World Bank, there were USD 941 million sent back from Hungary. The majority of the money was sent to Romania, USD 208 million, then, 123 million to Germany, 91 million to Slovakia, 72 million to China, 65 million to Serbia, 48 million to France and 33 million to Ukraine. There were other countries getting money from Hungary, such as India (USD 5 million), Japan (5 million), Jordan (2 million) and Nigeria (23 million).
The World Bank also calculated the amount of money sent to Hungary: according to these calculations this number is nearly USD 4.2 billion. Most of the money came from Germany, then 627 million from the US and 393 million came from Canada. The United Kingdom is only on the fourth place with 373 million.
Find the interactive map of Pew Research Center here.
Copy editor: bm
President Áder: Water Panel commits to doubling investments by 2021
Budapest (MTI) – The development banks party to the High Level Panel on Water (HLPW) have made a pledge to double the amount to be spent on water-related investments in the next five years, Hungary’s President János Áder said.
“We have taken a step forward, thank God,” Áder said after the meeting, held on the sidelines of the Budapest Water Summit 2016.
The participants were also in agreement that if nothing changes in the next 15-20 years, a water crisis may emerge in the world, which must be prevented, Ader told a press conference after a meeting of the Panel on Tuesday. He said assets worth some 15 trillion US dollars are endangered and if no action is taken the value of wealth at risk could triple by 2050.
Participants also agreed that the pace of financing and investments must be accelerated and new innovative financial solutions found to help water developments, and that banks must support new technologies in the water industry.
Further it was agreed that experimental programmes must be launched worldwide to be able to prevent the water crisis, which would affect billions of people.
The HLPW was set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim with the aim of accelerating progress on meeting Sustainable Development Goals.
Photo: MTI
Water Summit in Budapest – Economy minister meets leaders of world orgs
Budapest (MTI) – Economy Minister Mihály Varga met senior officials of several global organisations and institutions on the sidelines of the Budapest World Water Summit, which opened on Monday.
The minister held talks with Joaquim Levy, Managing Director of the World Bank, Nikolai Kosov, Board Chairman of the International Investment Bank (IIB), and Taizo Nishikawa, Deputy Director-General of UNIDO.
As a country with deep expertise in water management and rich water resources, Hungary can play an active and global role in cooperating with countries with a stake in sustainable development, Varga said after talks with Levy.
The minister highlighted several Hungarian companies with long-standing experience in water management, which he said could be involved in global projects funded by the World Bank. Varga and Levy agreed that the World Bank would be involved in promoting related international development programmes.
Varga and Kosov discussed IIB’s strategy for the 2017-2022 period. The minister agreed with IIB’s new guidelines which places greater emphasis on directly financing investment projects for both small and medium-sized firms and the public sector.
Varga and Nishikawa discussed Hungary’s strategy for re-industrialisation aimed at the country becoming one of the most industrialised members of the European Union by 2020. Nishikawa confirmed UNIDO’s support for the strategy.
Photo: MTI
President Áder: Sea change needed on water management
Budapest, November 25 (MTI) – At the upcoming global meeting in Budapest on water conservation and management, a transformation in attitudes is needed to match the outcome of the Paris climate summit tackling climate change, President János Áder said in an interview to public radio on Friday.
At next week’s world summit, 2,000 officials representing 111 countries will be present, of which 35 will be prime ministers or ministers, the president said. In addition, nine development banks and two big global organisations, the UN and World Bank, will also attend the three-day meeting, he added.
Ever since the Paris conference, people have spoken about climate change as evidential. Hopefully the Budapest conference will see a similar breakthrough and people will regard water as the most important yet the most endangered resource, he said.
Ader noted that three years ago the main goal of the Budapest conference on water management had been to set a framework for the future and place water among highlighted UN sustainable development goals. This target was met and now water-related issues are handled at the same level as, for example, the eradication of poverty and improving the position of women, he said.
A professional fair concentrating on the water industry will be held at Budapest’s Millennium Park between November 28 and 30, he noted.
UN officials and other experts from international organisations on sanitation, water hygiene and sustainable water management will be joined by politicians, businessmen and scientists. The goal is to connect capital with knowledge with a view to designing technological solutions. Also, civil groups will be key players in reaching sustainable development goals for the 2015-2030 period and implementing water-management practices laid down in the Paris climate change agreement. They will also help in making institutional reforms necessary to achieve these aims, he said.
Áder cited experts as stating that a water crisis would emerge within 15-20 years unless irresponsible attitudes to water use change. Population growth and past patterns of water use by residents, industry and agriculture are the basis for their prognosis, he said.
Áder warns of impending water crisis at FT Water Summit
London, October 12 (MTI) – The world has at most a few decades to prevent a global water crisis, President János Áder said at the Financial Times Water Summit in London on Wednesday.
Citing estimates from the World Bank and the World Water Council, Áder said that the world has no more than 20 years to prevent a global water crisis. This task will require an annual 600 billion dollars of investments, he added.
Áder also cited a recent study compiled by a Dutch university according to which two thirds of the world’s population, or some four billion people, have to go at least a month without access to water each year. The study also said that 1.8 billion people live in areas that suffer from water scarcity half the year and 500 million people inhabit areas where water consumption is double the natural water supply.
UN, World Bank chiefs ask Áder to serve on Panel on Water
Budapest, February 13 (MTI) – The UN’s secretary general and the president of the World Bank have jointly invited President János Áder to serve as member of the Panel on Water the two organisations have convened.
Csaba Kőrösi, directorate chief at the president’s office, told a press conference on Saturday that Ader accepted the request.
The panel is planned to be formally set up for a two-year term in April in New York and will be composed of 11 heads of state and government and two special advisors, Kőrösi said.
The panel will promote sustainable management of water on a global scale and more effective adaptation to climate change.
Korosi welcomed the assignment as a “great honour” for Hungary, noting that this is the first time in the United Nations’ history that a Hungarian politician is asked to join a high-level panel on a global issue.
Photo: MTI
Hungary jumps more than 10 places in World Bank’s ease of doing business ranking
Budapest, October 28 (MTI) – Hungary moved up by more than ten places to 42nd out of 189 countries in the World Bank’s 2016 Doing Business ranking, the economy ministry said on Wednesday.
The World Bank introduced a number of changes to the methodology used to compile the report, which allowed Hungary to improve to 42nd from its 2015 ranking of 54th place. The economy ministry said the new methodology gave a far more accurate picture of Hungary’s increased competitiveness and economic growth than the old one.
The ministry said that the old methodology was criticised by numerous countries, including Hungary, particularly regarding the economic indicators taken into account to determine economic strength. After two years of talks and recommendations from member states, including Hungary, the World Bank made changes to its methodologies and employed them for the first time in the latest report.
The report is significant as it is followed closely by potential investors and all major players of the finance industry, the economy ministry added.
Economy minister Varga: World Bank loan programmes could contribute to managing migrant crisis
Budapest, October 12 (MTI) – The World Bank could contribute to the handling of the migrant crisis through its loan and development programmes, Economy Minister Mihály Varga told public Kossuth Radio on Monday.
Varga said the migrant crisis dominated discussions at last weekend’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with the conclusion being that the bank could launch loan programmes that provide local jobs and income to people considering setting off for Europe. The bank’s programmes should also be used to create peaceful conditions in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, so migrants can eventually return home, he added.
World leaders now see the solution to the migrant crisis in tackling its root causes to prevent millions of people from having to leave their homes, the minister said.
He said migration would be one of the most important issues for Hungary and Europe in the foreseeable future, with the key question being how its causes can be eliminated.
Photo: MTI