Next year’s budget forecasts over 4 per cent growth
July 17th, 2019Commenting on next year’s budget, which was adopted by Parliament last Friday, analysts acknowledge the successes of the past eight years and ponder the chances of further growth.
On Portfolio.hu, László György, State Secretary at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology writes that 2020 will be the 8th year in a row with public deficits well under 3 per cent and the 4th in a row with 4 per cent GDP growth or more. He ascribes that success to Hungary’s balanced approach to the world economy. In fact, he argues, the government has rejected both a anti-globalist stance which would have chased multinationals from Hungary and a subservient one which would have subordinated economic policies to the wishes of foreign investors. György, who is also an associate professor of economics at Eötvös Loránd University, writes that after having thus stabilised Hungary’s national economy, the government’s task now is to promote competitiveness.
Mfor.hu (the online version of Management Forum) believes that next year’s budget is both cautious and fraught with risk. On the one hand, it prescribes unprecedentedly high reserves to counter a potential downturn in the world economy, while on the other, its calculations are based on 4 per cent GDP growth which is even higher than the figures released by the National Bank, which expects Hungary’s economy to grow by 3.6 per cent in 2020. Mfor’s experts also believe that inflation will be higher than the 2.8 per cent forecast by the authors of the budget.