During the novel coronavirus epidemic, preserving jobs and restarting the economy has to take precedence over a “rigid insistence” to keep the budget deficit below 3%, Finance Minister Mihály Varga has told public Kossuth Rádió.
The Hungarian economy is likely to shrink in 2020, Varga said. “At the moment”, the recession is estimated to be around 3%, he said. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund has pronounced Hungary to be in a much more “crisis resistant” state than during the last crisis in 2008, and so it is likely to survive the epidemic with relatively mild damages, Varga noted. To preserve jobs, the government is supporting companies with a variety of financial tools, Varga said. A development of a credit package is also in the last phases, he said.
MTI
