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The Foreign Minister stressed the importance of supporting investment and development in the food industry too, saying that priorities should not be abandoned in times of crisis.
National goals, such as full employment, should not be abandoned even in times of crisis, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said at the handover ceremony of the Hajdúhús 2000 Kft. investment in Debrecen, northeastern Hungary on Monday.
The Hungarian government is focusing on supporting investment in this period of economic crisis, just as it did during the coronavirus epidemic. This has worked before and will work again, and we Hungarians will be able to avoid the recession hitting the European economy,
he said.
In his speech, Péter Szijjártó pointed out that the world is “practically stumbling from crisis to crisis”, and that the world economy has turned upside down twice in the last three years in an unprecedented way. He underlined that what the pandemic and the war have in common is that neither of them originated in the food industry, yet both have had a dramatic impact on food supplies worldwide.
The coronavirus outbreak has disrupted supply chains, causing supply disruptions in many places, even in Western Europe, and the war in Ukraine threatens a severe food crisis as warring countries are the world’s food chambers, he explained.
“We are striving to be self-sufficient in the food supply, to be able to say that we produce more food than we consume,” the Minister underlined.
The Minister said that last year the food industry’s production value was 4400 billion forints (11 billion euros), a record, and in the first eight months of this year the sector, – which provides the livelihood of 134,000 families -, registered 46 percent growth, which is another record.
According to Szijjártó,
those who do not develop, those who do not invest, those who do not use the latest technology, will most certainly not be competitive in this sector either.
The state has contributed roughly one billion forints to the 2.6 billion forints(6,5 million euros) capacity expansion project in Debrecen, in return the meat company Hajdúhús has committed to maintaining its 192-strong workforce.
Featured photo via Facebook/Szijjártó Péter