On Monday, Minister of National Economy Márton Nagy and Zsuzsa Lakner, CEO of the Hungarian National Asset Management Company (MNV), presented last year’s results of the state-owned company. According to their presentation, state assets increased from HUF 11,650 to HUF 21,860 billion between 2010 and 2022. Márton Nagy has already emphasized that one of his goals is to reduce and rationalize the state’s unnecessary assets. Current state assets are divided into three areas:
Last year, the revenue data for state assets reached HUF 31.8 billion instead of the planned 22.7. The company’s revenues belong to the central budget.
The value of state assets is 25 percent of GDP and has doubled since 2010.
The head of the ministry underlined that they can see in detail what values and properties are currently in the “country’s inventory; the whole picture is visible”. According to Márton Nagy, asset management and sales take place at the same time, as the private sector can sometimes use it better.
“Most of the state’s wealth is in real estate and shares.” Last year, HUF 18.1 billion were sold. State real estate management is undergoing continuous sales to the private sector. This year, HUF 32.7 billion real estate sales are planned.
We are speeding up the sale of properties that are not useful for the state and valuable for the private sector.
MNV’s revenues peaked in 2021 with HUF 66.6 billion at the time. Márton Nagy also touched on the fact that last year all the properties managed by the ministry were mapped, according to which sales will take place in 2024, and a similar process can await background institutions in 2025.
Are they interfering with gasoline prices? What about growth?
After Márton Nagy’s presentation, members of the press had the opportunity to ask questions. We already wrote earlier that fuel prices will rise again from Wednesday, and we dealt in detail with the fact that the government has intervened in fuel prices several times. The minister previously told Index that the government has an agreement with the Hungarian Petroleum Association: “according to this, fuel prices must be in the middle range of the region”, however, fuel is currently the third most expensive in the region in Hungary.
Márton Nagy has now answered our questions about this, he can report that they had an agreement with the Hungarian Mineral Oil Association.
Now we see that there is a slippage here. That’s why I invited Mol and the Hungarian Mineral Oil Association for a meeting in the second half of the week to see how they envision our previous agreement. The next step will be a consequence and a function of this conversation. We will inform the media about this separately.
When asked why pressure should be put on fuel prices and why the government doesn’t let the market determine it, Márton Nagy underlined that fuel prices do not only follow Ural-type oil prices. “It has profit content and many other elements. When we negotiate, we examine these factors, including profit margins, to see if they are justified and how they develop in other neighboring countries.”
According to Márton Nagy, it is worthwhile to constantly compare and examine domestic fuel prices and their profit content with regional prices. In the ministry, they see that
contrary to the terms of the agreement, the prices slipped from the regional mid-range.
Previously, Finance Minister Mihály Varga, and last week Márton Nagy also pointed out that economic growth this year could be 2-3 percent instead of the previous expectation of 4 percent. In this regard, the head of the ministry said to Index’s questions that the government’s prognosis changed so quickly because the expectations regarding the German economy were not fulfilled, “this is clearly visible in the export data”. According to the head of the ministry, there were already signs of this in the last quarter of last year.
According to Márton Nagy, the government’s expectations have clearly decreased due to the weakness of the German economy and the vehicle industry.
According to the head of the ministry, growth depends on residential consumption, investment and net exports – the latter turned negative. “Consumption is coming up as we thought, we can see this in February’s retail sales as well. Food retail continued to rise, the overall picture was dragged down by fuel consumption. I don’t think that’s the problem.” He then reminded that he also thinks the Prime Minister’s prognosis is correct, and that a 2.5 percent increase is expected for this year.
We also asked what they discussed with the central bank governor last week. In this regard, Márton Nagy said that he had an excellent discussion with György Matolcsy. “It was an important meeting. The head of NGM and the head of the Hungarian National Bank cannot be wrong. We cooperate and talk to each other.” He stated: these regular meetings will have a positive, constructive character. In order to achieve sustainable growth in balance, “the past is past, we are looking to the future”.
In response to ATV’s questions, he stated that the Ministry of Justice will take legal action regarding SPAR: “the legal and economic issues must be examined”.
(Cover photo: Márton Nagy on October 22, 2022. Photo: Tamás Kaszás / Index)
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