Hungary MoFA reveals desired direction of new investment
Speaking at the event of the Joint Venture Association (JVSZ), the minister said that although the Hungarian economy remains centred on Budapest, the imbalance in the geographical location of investment has improved over the past six to eight years.
"Apart from the fact that, in addition to investment in Budapest, we have used various incentives to attract investment to the countryside, there was another major imbalance in the Hungarian economy, namely that the ability of the western part of the country, especially the north-west, to attract capital and investment was much stronger than that of the eastern part," he pointed out.
"We have worked hard in recent years to close the gap in the ability to attract capital between the East and West. And today, the Miskolc-Nyíregyháza-Debrecen triangle has attracted investments to the East that are among the largest in not only Hungary but also in Europe," he added.
"All this gives us the opportunity, once the ability of the eastern and western parts of the country to attract capital and investment has been roughly balanced, to shift the strategic focus of Hungarian government investment promotion to Southern Hungary from now on", he said.
Szijjártó said that the government will accordingly treat the Szeged-Pécs-Békéscsaba lane as a priority focus in the coming period.
As he said, the reasons why Baranya County has so far failed to attract more and larger investments must be identified and eliminated. One of the main reasons is that there has not been a large enough area with good transport links and good access to public services.
This will be resolved by creating a 600-hectare industrial investment area around Kővágószőlős and Kővágótöttös, and then the Pécs-Pogány airport will be made usable, as was done successfully in Győr. In addition, an important step is the completion of the direct high-speed rail link between Pécs and Osijek by the end of next year, and the issue of the Danube bridge in Mohács is also on the agenda, he said, adding that the Paks expansion is also urgently needed.
