Photography by Studio Odi Busman.
On the 22nd of January, the New Year’s reception for the Dutch Hungarian business community has been organized in the Residence of H.E. Orsolya Szijjártó, Ambassador of Hungary in Wassenaar. Last year’s top performance of Hungarian economy provides promising perspectives for further foreign direct investments in 2015.
The event was organized in cooperation with the Hungarian Business Network in order to discuss future opportunities of Dutch and Hungarian companies. In line with the new foreign policy of the Hungarian government, the Embassy is putting special emphasis on commercial diplomacy integrating trade issues and acceleration of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Hungary within diplomatic work, Ambassador Orsolya Szijjártó said during the reception.
The event brought together many companies that do business in Hungary; from big companies like British Telecom, ING, Univé, TMF Group, Capgemini Nederland to small and medium sized companies specialized in, among others, Hungarian culinary, design, retail, wine, innovation, tourism and logistics. The reception provided an excellent opportunity for cross-sectorial know-how exchanges, as also many consultants, universities and non-profit sector representatives were given the chance to develop new ideas together with the business sector.
Relations of the Embassy with the Netherlands-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce in Budapest are aimed to be further strengthened in 2015. As a first step of realizing this aim for 2015, members of the chamber were invited to participate at the event, together with Elzo Molenberg, first secretary of the Dutch Embassy in Budapest.
Regarding FDI in Hungary, Ambassador Orsolya Szijjártó said that the business environment for investment is good and expressed her optimism that the economic success of 2014, a GDP growth of 3,2% -3,7% in the first three quarters of 2014, will continue in 2015.
”2014 has been a milestone in the improvement of our economic indicators”, the Ambassador stated. ”With respect to GDP growth, Hungary is among the top 3 economies in Europe, and has been the best performing country in terms of lowering the unemployment rate in 2014. Regarding FDI, Hungary has outperformed regional competitors in terms of FDI/capita, while the investment volume rose by 35% as the employment generated by FDI rose by 50% compared to 2013.”
