Aldi has established an IT service center in Debrecen, which will also be decisive from the point of view of the German company’s global activities, Péter Szijjártó announced on Monday in Debrecen.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, at the handover of the new office of Aldi International IT Services Kft., the head of the department emphasized that the establishment of the IT services center would create fifty highly skilled jobs. The HUF 1.2 billion investment was supported by the state with HUF 120 million.
He stated that the office will also be decisive from the point of view of the global activities of the German company, which already has around 160 stores and a major logistics center in Hungary, and which covers the operation of its entire network with green electricity. Aldi’s entire global network, i.e. more than 200,000 employees, more than 7,000 stores and 80 logistics centers, will be served from here in Debrecen.
In his speech, he underlined that the world has tumbled from crisis to crisis in recent years, there have been reports of factory closures, unemployment, and corporate bankruptcies, and that workers in the food retail trade can clearly see the effects of skyrocketing inflation and energy prices.
“Under these circumstances, we can be particularly proud of the fact that, while the world economic system was reborn twice in the space of four years, we Hungarians were able to break our national economic and historical records in the most important economic indicators,” he declared.
“But how is all this possible in a fundamentally negative, declining economic environment? We were able to offset the negative global environment with the ever-increasing pace of incoming investments,” he opined.
Péter Szijjártó pointed out that investments are the basis of growth, and they also help the economy change its dimensions. “When we talk about the change of dimensions, we are basically talking about how to change the Hungarian economy from a production-oriented economy to an economy based on innovation, knowledge base or research and development,” he said.
He then announced that our country is “not doing badly” in this area, as evidenced by the tenth place in the world ranking of exports of high-tech economic activities, while the country is only 95th in terms of population.
“This shows that the creativity and innovativeness of the Hungarian people puts us in a much more favorable position than where a country of ten million people could automatically be ranked,” he said.
He also touched on the fact that today roughly 180,000 people work in the IT services sector in Hungary. Last year, the performance of the sector reached HUF 4,000 billion, which represents a 19 percent increase in one year, with an export value of approximately HUF 1,000 billion.
The minister then called it good news in relation to supply, that in Hungary last year and this year the number of students applying for information and communication courses increased by 34 percent, the number of engineers engaged in research and development doubled, and last year 73 percent more small and medium-sized enterprises informed about product innovation, as before.
Finally, he also touched on the fact that German companies continue to make up the largest investor community in our country. Last year, bilateral trade reached a record of 67 billion euros, and there is a good chance of doing so again this year after a ten percent increase in volume has been recorded so far.
According to Aldi’s announcement on Monday, the investment in Debrecen will create 50 jobs, and the company is looking for applications from language-speaking career starters and IT professionals from the region. The majority of new jobs offer the option of remote work.
They added that Aldi International IT Services Kft., established in 2018, provides IT support for the Aldi Süd group of companies, takes care of the IT systems of more than 4,000 European Aldi stores and 55 logistics centers and office buildings, and provides business and administrative services provides, develops software, provides a total of almost 500 services, the number of employees exceeds 700.
According to its public report, Aldi’s Biatorbágy-based company closed with a net sales revenue of almost 3.4 billion forints in 2021 and more than 6.1 billion forints in 2022, predominantly from foreign orders. Meanwhile, their annual profit increased from almost HUF 199 million to HUF 433 million.
(MTI)
Main picture: Péter Szijjártó
