Bridging the Crisis with Innovation
12 Thursday, March 15:00
Panel discussion with Mr Gordon BAJNAI, Hungarian Minister for National Development and Economy on the Budapest stand at MIPIM.
Although Hungary is thoroughly smitten by the crisis, leaders of the country are optimistic and informed the public about long term investments at MIPIM, Cannes.
Hungarian Minister for National Development and Economy, Mr. Gordon Bajnai emphasised infrastructural investments: a stimulus package of 7 billion Euros will be spent in the next 3 years on hospitals, schools, universities, innovation centres, logistics centres, industrial parks, road, railway, and public transport in the Budapest Region. The Minister also emphasised that last year Hungary was ranked the 3rd most attractive logistics location in Europe by Cushman & Wakefield. “Out of the 27 countries only Netherlands and Belgium was ahead of us”, the Minister added.
Mr Bajnai has also cited a data from a last year Ernst & Young publication stating that Hungary was ranked as the 7th most attractive FDI location in Europe. Adding another data, he mentioned a 2007 IBM study saying that 15% of all new R&D jobs are created in Hungary. Mr Bajnai underlined the BBR stand’s main message: Hungary having become a centre of European innovation. There are more than 130 multinational companies that have an R&D operation in Hungary and there are more than 50 companies that have their regional or global service centres located in Hungary with 30,000 people working in these service centres, the Minister added.
Ms. Éva Beleznay, chief architect of Budapest pointed out that 50% of the city budget goes on investment: there are 30 ongoing projects, supported also by EU and governmental money. She introduced Budapest’s 3 main areas of development covering IT & media, pharmaceutical industry and environmental research sector, along with the development of a more efficient public transport system, including the Metro 4 rapid transport line and more than 5000 P+R parking spaces.
Dr. Gergely Gulyás Kovács, Chairman of BBR and Managing Director of Duna City emphasised the importance of BBR, which is one of the first clusters in the region helping to connect the actors of real estate industry. Dr Gulyás Kovács revealed that the BBR cluster, as a unique initiative, has succesfully made the government, the Budapest Municipality and the private sector join to present Budapest together.
Mr. Jochen Schnier Director Fund & Portfolio Management of GLL Real Estate Partners, a major investor in the Budapest office market, expressed his unbroken trust in the CEE region and Hungary. „I believe that this country is competitive, has a skilled labour force and also the ability to attract international service providers”, shared his view on the current situation.
Mr. György Rétfalvi, Managing Director of the Hungarian state agency ITDH, reported that many of the companies are thinking in longer terms now, and may delay decisions, but in hard times there is a lot more profit issue to be addressed, and announcements e.g. on almost 1000 new 1st class office positions are also in the pipeline. Regarding the crisis management, he outlined two programs supported by EU funds: the first gets extra support for business clusters, while the second encourages universities to focus on one issue and bring specialized knowledge to business.
The discussion was closed with the well-known first-in, first-out rule. „Hungary was in the first group of countries affected by the crisis, so it can be among the pioneers to overcome it”, summarized the arguments Mr. Noah Steinberg, CEO of Hungarian developer WING.
Moderator:
Mr Noah STEINBERG, BBR (CEO of WING Zrt.)
Participants:
Mr Gordon BAJNAI, Minister for National Development and Economy,
Ms Éva BELEZNAY, Chief Architect of Budapest,
Mr György Rétfalvi (CEO of ITD Hungary),
Dr Gergely GULYÁS KOVÁCS, Chairman of BBR (Managing Director of DunaCity Budapest),
Mr Jochen SCHNIER, Director Fund & Portfolio Management of GLL Real Estate Partners
