Hungary: Smes Get Priority

Hungary’s center-right government coalition has pledged to allocate a whopping HUF 1-trillion to strengthen small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to help boost its ailing economy. The money has been promised to arrive to the SMEs by no later than December 31, 2013 via EU funds secured by Hungary’s  Ministry of national Development. The ministry intends to restore the earlier launched national development plan (abolished by the MSzP, when it came to power in 2002) known as the Szechenyi Plan, named after 19th Century Count Istvan Szechenyi, who spent most of his wealth on developing Hungary’s infrastructure and academy of science. In the past Hungary has been heavily criticized by the European Commission and European leaders for not being able to utilize available European Union funds it should have secured. They reportedly believe Hungary could be at least 20 years ahead, in terms of infrastructural development and economically. Currently SMEs have reportedly only been able to secure maximum 10% of all available EU funding for Hungary. The government plans to initially increase this to 50% by the end of 2011. The EC is said to have originally set aside HUF  7.9-trillion in funds for Hungary for the period 2007-2013. Because Hungary was negligent it can now only secure maximum HUF 1.8 trillion before the end of 2013. At the same time Hungary is in dire need of boosting its SME sector, which the government believes could absorb most of the national 11-12% unemployment rate (the undeveloped and uneducated parts of NE Hungary reportedly have an unemployment rate of as much as 40%).