Hungarian exports last year showed a “brutal” 14 percent growth to €119 billion, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Tuesday.
Szijjártó stressed that achieving this required important government decisions that focused on jobs, development, and investment incentives rather than distributing aid.
“The record-breaking decision required the excellent performance of Hungarian workers and the brave companies that dared to develop and gain new markets in the world even with the coronavirus pandemic,” Szijjártó said, adding that the number of jobs in Hungary is at a record high.
“While Hungary is only 95th in the world in terms of population, its export performance is ranked 34th in the global ranking,” Szijjártó told the inauguration of the Ózd plant of Wellis Zrt, Europe’s largest jacuzzi maker.
In his speech, he highlighted that the pandemic had put the whole world under severe stress, with even “the richest, strongest, largest countries almost collapsing under the weight of the load.”
The Hungarian foreign minister explained how in the past two years there had been almost exclusively negative news from the global economy, with 114 million unemployed and a 42 percent drop in the value of direct investment.
“The status quo of the world economy has broken and a new era has begun, which is starting with fierce competition for the redistribution of liberated capacities,” he said, adding that this is a challenge for Hungary, but also a great opportunity.
“The Hungarian model of crisis management can be summed up in that people’s lives must be saved by vaccination and jobs by investment,” he emphasized, affirming that this strategy had proved to be a success and a major step forward for the Hungarian economy, which managed to reach its pre-crisis performance last summer.
