Ministry for National Economy
Mihály Varga
Minister for National Economy
The Ministry for National Economy organized for the tenth time a two-day international conference with the title “Double Challenge: the Launching and Closing of Competitiveness Operative Programmes.”
The event held in Budapest on 23-24 April 2015, focused on the double challenge that the year 2015 is posing, as in addition to closing the operative programmes of the period 2007-2014 the programmes of the new fiscal EU period 2014-2020 -- with the largest ever amount of funding -- are to be launched.
The conference aimed to be a forum for exchanging important experiences and good practices for representatives of member states. The conference was opened by Minister of State for the Utilization of EU Funds Balázs Rákossy, Director of Brussels-based DG Regional and Urban Policy Erich Unterwurzacher and Minister of State for EU Development Eszter Vitályos.
In his speech, Balázs Rákossy summed up the previous period by proving an overview of the Hungarian Government’s key objectives in 2010 and the measures which have led Hungary to be the country with the fastest-growing economy of the EU.
“Since 2013, it has become visible that our economy has been expanding, its structure is turning sounder and the pace of growth reached 3.6 percent in 2014. It is especially important, as the country had last seen such expansion before the onset of the crisis. These data beat not only prior expectations, but also the EU average,” the Minister of State said.
“Years of hard work have also resulted in financial and fiscal stability; we can keep the government budget deficit below 3 percent (of GDP) and general government debt has also been reduced. Financial markets are also acknowledging the success of the Government’s economic policy that secures a sustainable fiscal path,” he stressed.
Speaking of EU funds, Balázs Rákossy said that the Government regards these as investment, placing special emphasis on developing domestic SMEs and fostering their growth; creating jobs and developing the Hungarian industrial sector. The Government has formulated concrete goals it aims to achieve through EU funds until 2020, such as full employment, increasing the share of the industrial sector within GDP from the current 20 percent to 30 percent or raising the share of SME export revenues from the current 4.7 percent to 19 percent.
Erich Unterwurzacher, Director of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, called the Hungarian strategy a good example, as it almost triples available EU funding compared to the previous programming period.
In her welcome note, Minister of State for EU Development Eszter Vitályos stated that they expect to publish 133 new EU tenders totalling HUF 2704bn this year.
Attendees of the conference were delegated by Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Germany, Hungary and the European Commission.
(Ministry for National Economy)
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése