On Tuesday, Mihály Varga said that out of the 11 million Volkswagen diesel engines with emission cheating software, around 2-2.5 million were assembled in Hungary. He estimated that the Volkswagen scandal will weaken the Hungarian GDP by 0.3-0.6 per cent.

Mr Varga added that the government is cooperating with Audi Hungary in order to protect Hungarian contracts and the employees of the car manufacturer. He added that in order to facilitate further diversification in Hungarian industry and make the economy less dependent on car manufacturing, the governments wants to boost medicine, information technology and medical instrument engineering.

In Magyar Nemzet, Péter Bodacz welcomes the Minister of National Economy’s plan to help the further diversification of Hungarian industrial output. The conservative columnist thinks that both Left and Right-wing governments have put car manufacturing in the centre of their economic policies and tried to attract as many car producers as possible.

This made Hungary’s exports highly dependent on the volatile auto industry. Today, car manufacturing has a 22 share in Hungarian industrial output and 130,000 workers are employed in the sector, which also contributed 10 per cent of Hungary’s total exports.

In conclusion, Bodácz recommends that the government offers preferential tax agreements not only to multinational car producers but to Hungarian bus companies too, in order to help the diversification of manufacturing and to protect the jobs of Hungarian contractors.

Source: BudaPost

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