Mr Orbán outlined: the project worth HUF 35 billion will provide high added-value, future-proof jobs for 210 people, including in the area of research and development; jobs to the highest high-tech industrial standards.
He added that the next gen mobility plant unit would be built here in Zalaegerszeg which would specifically seek to find solutions to the most important challenges facing the automotive industry. Europe will be supplied from Zala with automotive industry, information technology and battery platforms as well as with “all sorts of electronic devices about which a mere mortal doesn’t even know they exist,” he pointed out.
He said the Government of Hungary contributed to this with a grant worth HUF 7.8 billion.
He also said the company provides jobs for six thousand people in the country, four thousand of whom work here in Zalaegerszeg.
It is also thanks to this that in the past 15 years, the rate of employment in County Zala has risen from 58 per cent to 73 per cent, while the real value of net average earnings has increased over a period of 9 years by 60 per cent.
He added that in the past 5 years, more people had come back to this county than had moved out, despite the fact that earlier there had been continual migration from the region; Flex plays an enormous role in this great achievement.
There is also a more profound, principled issue concerning the very essence of economic policy behind the opening of the factory and the provision of support, the Prime Minister said. “As to whether the Hungarian people’s money should be spent on projects such as this,” he said in Hungary there are two fundamentally different answers to this question, there are two different schools. According to one school, “this is what we stand for, by supporting projects like this, we spend the Hungarian people’s money in the best possible way, given that we have always stood for performance, jobs with a high added value and good investments coming to Hungary. We are convinced that these investments make the future predictable and safe so that there should be well-paid jobs, there should be predictable careers, there should be families, homes and children, and so that we can keep taxes low and pay decent pensions. We are able to achieve these goals precisely with projects and factories like the one that Flex has just built here,” the Prime Minister explained.
At the same time, Mr Orbán stressed that there was also another school, claiming that no money should be given for purposes like this. This is a classic left-wing position, the end result of which everyone knows only too well: unemployment, high taxes, indebtedness and eventually impoverishment, he warned, observing that he speaks from experience because he lived through this not once, but twice; first in 1998 after Lajos Bokros, and then in 2010 in the wake of the left-wing government that preceded them in office. “Of course, in the end, we are compelled to eliminate the negative consequences of this bad economic policy and to remedy the problems,” the Prime Minister said.
He highlighted that this investment was an especially great achievement because now there was a war devastating the eastern ends of Europe, and this war was blocking investments and the economic opportunities of the entire European Union. Additionally, Europe’s international weight in the world economy is decreasing by the day, “a new world economic order is unfolding, the pages of which – as far as I can see – are regrettably no longer written on the old continent,” he said.
He also drew attention to the fact that there were forces in Europe which wanted to continue the war for which they needed money, the money of the European people, including the Hungarians’. This requires tax increases and the assumption of loans, the interest of which “will be paid even by our grandchildren.” “If this is what we spend our money on, we will never have enough resources left to develop our industry and factories, to build and to bring to Hungary modern technologies such as those that Flextronics has brought here now,” Mr Orbán stressed.
He added that the continent was already falling dangerously behind in the field of the latest cutting-edge technologies, there was hardly any European product in the world for which there was valid demand, while the market shares of the few remaining products were further diminishing.
By contrast, he described the company Flextronics as a success story as – he said – it has orders for years in advance, meaning that this factory symbolises a success story not only by virtue of it having been built, but due to its portfolio of orders, it is bound to be one of the greatest industrial successes of the next few years here in Hungary.
“While we are facing a positively dangerous period here in Europe, this does not mean that this period ahead has no opportunities to offer, and Zala County is in the vanguard in the exploration and exploitation of these opportunities,” said the Prime Minister who also mentioned that 70 per cent of Flex’s suppliers are Hungarian-owned also today, and 98 per cent of the products made here are exported.
At the end of his speech, addressing the investors, Mr Orbán highlighted that “Hungary’s patriotic right-wing government will guarantee a calm and predictable environment, including the issue of war and peace, including a stable industry policy, a stable system of taxation and the issue of supporting developments and investments of this nature, also in the future.”
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