PM vows to avoid 5 traps in the economy
February 22nd, 2022Commenting on Mr Orbán’s speech outlining his economic policy, a left-wing commentator believes PM Orbán has never been good at understanding how the economy works.
Addressing the annual assembly of the Chamber of Trade and Industry on Saturday, PM Viktor Orbán identified five ’traps’ Hungary must avoid over the forthcoming decade. These included an excessive weight of foreign-owned businesses and a widening prosperity gap between Budapest and the rest of the country.
In Népszava, Miklós Bonta writes that the Prime Minister has never understood the ’laws of the economy’. In particular, he dismisses the Prime Minister’s view that Hungary suffers from ‘a negative profit balance’, which means that foreign companies transfer several times more profits to their home countries from Hungary than the amount of the profit reaped by Hungarian companies investing abroad. Bonta suggests that foreign companies which bring in new technologies, create jobs and pay taxes in Hungary do not necessarily export more of their profits than ‘native’ businesses. If they find good investment opportunities in Hungary, they will reinvest here, he writes.