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Dániel Palotai, the current managing director and chief economist of Magyar Nemzeti Bank, will be the first Hungarian to join the top decision-making body of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as of November 1, Index reported. The 24-member board will include a representative from the group of Central and Eastern European countries (Turkey, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Slovenia and Kosovo), which it hopes will lead to favorable results for the region.
First of all, I consider it my task to effectively represent national interests and develop a more realistic, profound and positive image of Hungary.
The financial specialist told Index.
Given that the Board decides not only on the internal affairs of the IMF, but also on matters that affect the 190 member countries, the position of Executive Director can be considered not only an economic-financial but also a diplomatic task.
When asked if the previous bad relationship between the IMF and Hungary could be improved with the participation of the Hungarian Board of Directors, Dániel Palotai recalled that the Hungarian government was expected to tighten the IMF loan requested in autumn 2008, while the debt public sector exceeded 80% of GDP. the national economy was in a difficult situation. For this reason, the Orbán government rejected the IMF program in 2010 and instead developed the Széll Kálmán plan, which reduced the burden with, among other things, the flat-rate proportional PIT and shifted it to higher capacity sectors in place of the population by introducing crisis taxes.
Today, Hungary’s relationship with the IMF is much better than ten years ago, as the IMF also saw that its previous program, which was based mainly on austerity, was not correct. In fact, programs based on austerity cannot be successful as they only exacerbate the crisis and thus worsen the budget balance.
– emphasized Palotai, who said that it is particularly important in the current epidemic situation that the IMF has already granted favorable loans to more than 80 countries, albeit in the short term, but much faster than before and without the usual conditions.
Daniel Palotai
He graduated from Corvinus University in Budapest with a degree in economics in 2004. He began his professional career at Magyar Nemzeti Bank, where he worked as an analyst between 2004 and 2007. From 2007, he continued his work at the European Central Bank, where he learned how to deal with the financial crisis as an analyst in charge of some countries in the EU outside the euro area. Since November 2010, he has headed the macroeconomic department of the Ministry of National Economy and actively participated in the development of Hungary’s structural reform program, as well as assisting in the economic and financial stabilization of Hungary as a member of the Union’s Economic Policy Committee. European. From 2013 to 2020, he was Executive Director and Chief Economist of the MNB, but he was also a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the European Central Bank and of the Economic and Financial Committee of the European Union. In 2015, he received the Sándor Popovics Award, which recognizes the outstanding professional achievements of economists under 45 years of age. As of 2017 he was elected vice president of the Hungarian Economic Society, and since 2019 he was a member of the board of trustees of the Maecenas Universitatis Corvini Foundation, which is maintained by the Corvinus University of Budapest.
(Cover image: Dániel Palotai. Photo: Lajos Soós / MTI)
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