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The Prime Minster said in the government’s mind, the final balance of war is always negative, while that of peace is always positive, and so the peace strategy can also be construed as a strategy of economic prosperity.
The government’s peace strategy guarantees that Hungarian businesses emerge as reliable partners for every country even if they lie at geopolitical fault lines, he stressed.
He added that it was thanks to this peace strategy that OTP was a welcome investor even in countries which were situated in sensitive geopolitical areas. In addition to Ukraine and Russia, OTP emerges as a significant player also in the Balkans, Moldova and Central Asia, he pointed out.
Mr Orbán said if we finally manage to bring the war to a conclusion, and the Hungarian government is working hard for this, enormous opportunities will open up on the markets that are presently affected by the war, and he is certain that OTP will be a winner of this.
He said every year OTP renders a performance as a contribution to the Hungarian national economy “before which we must doff our hats, and we do.”
He stated that in Hungary in 2026 the nominal GDP will amount to HUF 95,000 billion, the sovereign debt will stand at 73.2 per cent, the deficit of the budget will be around 3.7 per cent, and there will be minimum 4.7 million workers. He added that at the end of 2023, the value of state assets had soared to HUF 22,939 billion which was a 97 per cent increase since 2010.
He compared the shareholder meeting with the functioning of the country. He said there are similarities in politics, but “the country is not a company limited by shares,” the shares cannot be sold if the direction is not right, according to the code of ethics, “May fortune’s hand bless or beat you Here you must live and die.”
Mr Orbán said the state has ten million shareholders, eight million of whom have voting rights. In Hungary, “there are shareholder meetings only once every four years,” and compared with the shareholders of the state, the shareholders of OTP “are very soft-hearted.” “In our corporation, the entire board can find themselves sacked much more easily,” he said in reference to the government.
He said there is also a supervisory board in the person of the opposition, and he sincerely hopes that at OTP this organisation does a better job.
The Prime Minister mentioned among the government’s fundamental principles concerning banks that the cabinet always takes the side of the smaller players, the people against the stronger ones. He stressed that those who saw this as an anti-bank stance were wrong because the same as in every other area of life, also in the financial system, balance was of the essence. And balance does not come into being of its own accord, it must be created by the government, “in a desirable scenario in agreement with you,” he stated.
He said the second fundamental principle is that for Hungary the banking sector is a strategic industry, banks must prosper because “there is no such thing as a rich country with poor banks.”
As a third fundamental principle, he highlighted that the banking sector, too, played an important role in Hungary’s favourable international position.
In the past few years, actors of the Hungarian banking sector, OTP in particular, have concluded multiple agreements with the government, he stated. He said with combined efforts, they managed to neutralise “the ticking time bomb of foreign currency loans.” He added that OTP assumed the lion’s share in the student loan facility, but the baby expecting loan facility, too, was a successful joint programme. In the Prime Minister’s words, it is a truly unique Hungarian and world sensation that it is possible to involve the banking sector in population policy issues. In this regard, he drew attention to the fact that with the assistance of banks, more than 271,000 such loans had been disbursed up to mid-April 2025.
Among the joint programmes, he also mentioned the worker loan and the five per cent housing loan designed to support young people. Regarding the details of the latter, he indicated that the banking system had agreed to provide loans with maximum five per cent interest for young people between 1 April 2025 and 31 October 2025.
Mr Orbán recalled that in the 1990s but even in the early 2000s, it was a popular thought that the nationalities of the owners of banks were irrelevant. They said money has no smell, but then we learnt that its owner does, he said, pointing out that in 2008 foreign-owned banks repatriated their money from Hungary as fast as they could, suspended lending, and we Hungarians were left here “high and dry.” He pointed out that since 2010 the government had worked hard to achieve minimum fifty per cent domestic ownership in the Hungarian banking sector, and they had managed to achieve this feat.
The Prime Minister stressed that OTP played a key role in the development of the Hungarian banking system and the country as a whole.
The OTP Bank Group’s credit portfolio worth HUF 22,600 billion is larger than the credit portfolio of all other bank groups operating in Hungary combined, he pointed out, adding that not only the Hungarian lending market, but also the Hungarian capital market is inconceivable without OTP. Proof of its consolidation is the fact that in 2024 seventy per cent of its financial profit was derived from foreign, while thirty per cent from domestic interests which is unprecedented in the entire history of the Hungarian economy, Mr Orbán laid down.
That OTP became a success story after the fall of communism could not have happened without Sándor Csányi, he pointed out. His work is proof of the fact that it is possible to preserve a large Hungarian corporation as a national champion, whilst completely withdrawing from it all state interests at the same time, the Prime Minister stressed. Sándor Csányi and OTP managed this, they did not squander these stakes, did not allow others to acquire them, strategic control remained in the management’s hands, Mr Orbán said, wishing the new chief executive Péter Csányi all the very best with achieving similar feats.
OTP has always been capable of renewing itself, and has always been able to preserve its dominant domestic role; OTP is a big common Hungarian success story, he stated. “Hungary has every reason to be proud of you, and it is,” he added.
The Prime Minister said “all I can tell those who complain that I make rules for banks despite never having been a banker myself and so I can’t possibly know the ropes is that Sándor Csányi leads the Hungarian Football Federation without ever having played in a top league,” what matters is that the results speak for themselves.
