Although the price of the euro was already at 365, the MNB was the last to recognize that there will be a recession this year; Katalin Novák promised the best home building program of all time; Preparations for the construction of the dam on Shipyard Island have come to a halt. This is hvg.hu’s weekly economic summary.

The last bastion of optimism has also fallen. Recently, Governor György Matolcsy argued that there will be no recession this year, but now the Magyar Nemzeti Bank changed its rationale to justify the interest rate decision and then issued its inflation report, so it turned out: 5.1-6.8 percent at the central bank. A recession is expected. Furthermore, inflation is expected to remain high until 2022, layoffs for companies are looming, and real revenues are projected to decline.

As hundreds of new coronavirus infections are diagnosed day by day, so is investor confidence in the country. The guilder / euro exchange rate fell to 365. The current weakness is not just a criticism of Hungary, investors are spilling their money in euros or dollars instead of almost all Central European currencies, but it does not help that the forint was already waiting weakly the second wave.

The MNB did not change the base rate. You made an important decision this way, which can also be seen as a hidden interest rate increase: the one-week deposit interest rate was the same as the base rate until now, but is now 0.15 percentage points per on top of it.

So the present is not a bright thing, but beautiful visions are not lacking either. The first speaker at the roving meeting of the Hungarian Economic Society was György Matolcsy, who spoke about the fact that this decade will have a strong geopolitical character and a financial revolution will come. And the crisis must be addressed both economically and socially, he said, and the biggest surprise was that he recognized there was a crisis.

Mihály Varga also spoke at the wandering meeting. He talked about: what has been our advantage in recent years has now become our disadvantage, the automobile industry, the hospitality industry and the service sector are also suffering. According to the Minister of Finance, although it has been a good result that we have been able to reduce the level of public debt in recent years, due to the current crisis, we can take a step back in reducing debt for up to 5-6 years.

Mihály varga

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Tighter regulations on the use of masks have come into effect. Now it is mandatory to wear a mask in public transport, waiting rooms, bus stops, shopping malls, theaters, cinemas, museums, libraries, post offices. We looked around to see if people were taking the regulations seriously and came to the conclusion: not really.

Not many people wore masks at stops in Budapest, but almost everyone got into the vehicle, although not everyone managed to hold their nose. We went to a mall where the vendors didn’t take the rule seriously. Few people in Szeged still cover their faces on public transport, but more and more people are careful.

At MÁV-Start, the guides’ responsibility to keep masked passengers, the train stopped several times due to renitents. The Workers’ Union requested a ten-minute rest period for every two hours spent in the mask. And in a second-hand shop in Pécs, it was compulsory for everyone to remove their mask after entering while being photographed, having been robbed twice in half a year, most recently wearing a medical mask.

Image of the week: EUrologist arrives at HVG.

Katalin Novák, the newly appointed minister with no portfolio for families, promised the largest home-building program in history. The promise came as a surprise to the profession, if only because the development of the oxidation zone development program that was just beginning was preceded by a broader consultation, but now it was not.

There are leading developers in the market looking to discover the birth of a great national housing policy. However, one researcher suggested that the government would increase demand, but even due to chocolate, prices per square meter had fallen, so much that supply could not keep up with inflated demand.

The amount of cross-border state subsidies channeled through the Bethlen Gábor Fund decreased in 2019, although it still reached 60 billion. Along with the Foreign Ministry’s own subsidies, almost 100 billion have left the border and there are still unknown items in the budget.

As in previous years, the BGA did not distribute most of the money, precisely HUF 48 billion, not through tenders, but through “individual grants”. Most of the money, HUF 24 billion, went to Transylvania. The money was destined to the churches, but the construction of ice rinks could not be missed either.

Despite the government’s promise to stop planning the construction of the Shipyard Island dam and thus save 15.3 hectares of wooded forest, project preparation continued, Gergely Karácsony said Tuesday. On behalf of the government, Gergely Gulyás replied: the minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office – who had previously announced that there would be no project that was not supported by the municipality – wrote that the mayor was fighting ghosts.

As it turned out later, the licensing process was still ongoing at the time. On Wednesday, however, the National Water Directorate withdrew its request for development. Therefore, the authority had no choice but to terminate the authorization procedure. We did a video report on the island before the politicians clashed again: we were looking at how much environmental damage the construction of the dam system would entail and how long the area has been on the agenda.



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