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Hungary keen to invest in ASEAN

The Hungarian government has expressed its strong interest in forging closer ties with the ASEAN region and its member states.

The country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbá, paid an official visit to the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia on February 1 and told ASEAN officials Hungary would like to deepen cooperation with the bloc in the areas of culture, education and trade.

He announced that Hungary would offer scholarship programmes for students from ASEAN member states to study in his country in a bid to share knowledge and culture.

Orbá noted the economic potential of ASEAN, and said that Hungary supports stronger trade and investment ties with the region as part of the ASEAN-EU framework of cooperation, which is being developed.

ASEAN secretary general Le Luong Minh told Orbá that ASEAN’s strong economic growth would provide excellent opportunities for the expansion of trade and investment. The bloc forms the seventh largest economy in the world and is expected to become the fourth largest economy by 2050. In 2014, the community’s 10 members had a combined GDP of US$2.6 trillion.

Hungary is also bolstering its ties with individual ASEAN members. According to the Vietnam News, earlier this year the country’s minister of foreign affairs and trade, Szijjarto Peter, visited Vietnam and met government officials to discuss increasing bilateral ties in trade, investment, development and education, among other areas.

He said Hungary is particularly interested in supporting Vietnam’s agro-forestry-fishery, garment and footwear industries and wishes to invest in Vietnamese infrastructure, renewable energy, environment treatment technology, food processing and pharmaceuticals.

The two countries currently have bilateral trade and investment worth US$200 million, which the two governments would like to increase.