On January 29, the new “Cooperation for a More Competitive Hungary 2018” recommendation package was sent to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his cabinet.
The first ’Cooperation for a more competitive Hungary’ recommendation package was published in February 2016 and AmCham has been dedicated to publishing and discussing its recommendations with the Government since then, in pursuit of the improvement of Hungary’s competitiveness.
The new 16-point package represents our commitment to move our economy and country forward, and it is again considered to be a living document, open for further dialogue. We would like to continue this dialogue with our members, the business community, the academia and our government partners to make Hungary more competitive globally, more attractive to investors and to think ahead of the game in the current economic race.
The new publication is separated into four broad chapters which are in line with our Policy Task Forces: General Business Climate (Investment), Competitive Workforce and Education (Competitive Workforce), Innovation and Research & Development (Innovation) and Digitalization (Digitalization).
Highlights of our recommendations and areas for development include:
- widening the labour supply
- creating a more balanced industrial portfolio by advancing the paradigm shift to “Invented in Hungary”
- the gradual phase-out of crisis taxes
- introduction of new incentives to support labour mobility, focusing on families
- supporting key competencies and skills in education
- further raise of the education budget
- enhancement of a more structured cooperation between business and education
- more effective foreign language teaching
- creating a more supportive innovation ecosystem in higher education
- gaining international competitive advantage through revolutionary digital projects
As part of our advocacy flow, the publication of the recommendation package is followed by a structured dialogue where the recommendations are discussed with the government on the regular working group meetings with representatives of the Ministry for National Economy, state secretary roundtables, business forums and conferences (e.g. Business Meets Government Summit, Competitive Education Conference, Business Meets Universities Workshop). We are proud to say that as a result of expert level consultations we have made considerable progress in many areas with our previous recommendation packages (for details please see page 16 of our Annual Report 2017 publication) and we are looking forward to further discussions and joint work.
AmCham would like to thank its members and partners for sharing their expertise and for their contribution towards developing policy recommendations. As emphasized before by AmCham CEO Irisz-Lippai-Nagy, we are a powerful network and community and thanks to the commitment and engagement of our members, we have real success stories that we are proud of and that can build on in the future to be a more effective and indispensable partner in enhancing Hungary’s competitiveness.
