| Foreign trade |
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| Tuesday,July 15,2008 Posted: 21:52 BJT(52 GMT) |
| From:驻匈经商处 Article type:Redistributed |
Hungary is a founding member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and member of the European Union since the 1st of May 2004.
Foreign trade is vital for the country, as Hungary is an extremely open economy - the degree of openness (ie the share of exports in the GDP) is around 65%. This fact is not only due to the size of the economy, but also to an open and active economic and trade policy.
Hungary’s central location makes it a useful bridgehead for transit trade between East and West, and a convenient initial basis for working the markets in the old and new EU member, as well as the countries included in the next round of EU enlargement (Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia).
The dynamic growth of exports in the past decade was mainly due to the settlement of multinational companies in Hungary. Over 70 percent of the country’s exports are produced by partly or fully foreign-owned companies. Substantial foreign investment had flown into Hungary, and the mid-90s witnessed massive export drive. The turnover of foreign trade increases annually around 20 %. Although the growth rate of exports and imports have slowed down in the past years, they still average 10% annually.
The trade balance of the country is usually negative, although Hungary has been having a surplus with the group of developed countries for many years.
The geographical structure of Hungarian foreign trade has completely changed in the past 15 years: over 75% of foreign trade is carried out with European Union countries, while previously a similar percentage went to the former socialist countries. The top customers of Hungary were Germany (31,4 %), Austria (6,8 %), France (5,7 %), Italy(5,6 %), the United Kingdom (5,1%) followed by Sweden and the Netherlands, each with 3-4 %. The top suppliers included Germany (29,1 %), Austria (8,3%), the Russian Federation (5,7%), the Netherlands (4,9%), China (4,9%), France (4,7%) and Japan with 3,1%.
The sectorial structure of the Hungarian exports and imports has also changed significantly: in exports the proportion of machinery products increased from 21% to 62,3 % Manufactured goods were at second place with 27,7 %. Exports of fuels and electric energy have remained 2-3% The proportion of agricultural and food products, as well as raw materials fell continuously during the past years, they currently represent together less than 9 %. The share of agricultural and food products accounted for 6 %. In imports, machinery and equipment had the biggest share with 53,3 %, followed by manufactured goods with 34,0 %.
The most important import products to Hungary include oil and gas, automotive components, computer equipment, gas turbines, measuring instruments. Hungary’s principal export products are electrical machinery, machine tools, vehicles (non-railway) and organic chemicals.
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