Following the HUF 40 billion investment by the German automotive company Schedl, 160 new jobs will be created in Debrecen and Kecskemét, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced on Friday in Budapest.
According to the ministry’s press release, the head of the ministry said that the company is making greenfield investments in two locations, in Debrecen and Kecskemét, and in its newly established units, it will carry out wheel assembly and sequencing activities for BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars manufactured in Hungary between 2025 and from.
The value of the project is 40 billion forints, for which the state provides a subsidy of two billion forints, thus facilitating the creation of 160 new jobs in the two cities, he informed.
He also explained that the new investment won in the fierce competition further strengthens the leading role of the German investment community in Hungary, where around twenty percent of foreign working capital can be linked to German companies, and the number of people employed by them exceeds 300 thousand.
“The investment is once again a good certificate for Hungarian-German economic relations and clearly shows that the companies have not lost their common sense and that they make their decisions not based on newspaper articles or NGO reports, but based on reality,” he stated.
In his speech, Péter Szijjártó also reported on the unpredictability and crises of recent years, underlining that although the global economic status quo was broken three times within a short period, there was one process that, despite all the difficulties, is moving forward unstoppably: the electric transition of the automotive industry.
He emphasized that this technological revolution presents a new challenge to all world economy players, governments and businesses.
“We Hungarians entered this new competition with serious ambition, as we declared our goal from the very beginning that we not only want to participate in this new competition but also to be among the best in it,” he said.
He explained that the transition of the automotive industry brought about a world economic era in which civilized and cultured cooperation between East and West is more important than ever due to mutual interdependence.
In this regard, he believed that all of this fits perfectly into the government’s strategy, the aim of which is to make the country the European meeting point of Eastern and Western economies.
“And this economic policy strategy also brought results in the sense that, for the first time in many centuries, Hungary is not a follower but a leader of a major technological transformation that fundamentally determines the future of the world economy,” he said.
In support of this, the minister stated that apart from Germany and China, all three German premium car brands are the only ones with production capacity in Hungary, and five of the world’s ten largest electric battery manufacturers have already committed themselves to Hungary.
“These also bring with them increased supplier needs, which have two effects. One is that more and more supplier companies are coming to Hungary and that the demand for the products and services of small and medium-sized Hungarian companies is constantly increasing,” he pointed out.
Furthermore, he emphasized that the domestic automotive industry has come a long way in the past decade and a half, while in the last six years, Hungary has been one of the twenty largest automotive exporters in the world.
“By the way, these 20 countries account for more than 90 percent of the world’s automotive exports. By 2022, we have also achieved that the production value of the automotive industry will exceed HUF 10,000 billion, and after an 11 percent increase last year, it will already approach HUF 14,000 billion ” – he informed.
(MTI)
Main picture: Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó gives a speech at the press conference announcing Schedl’s investment in the ministry on March 22, 2024. 160 new jobs will be created in Debrecen and Kecskemét as a result of the HUF 40 billion investment by the German automotive company. MTI/Zoltán Máthé
