Understanding megatrends can help you achieve sustainable growth

By: Trademagazin Date: 2025. 01. 22. 10:14

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The 2020s are a period of transformation of major global economic systems, when the totality of changes reaches a critical magnitude. Knowledge of the historically significant changes and megatrends taking place in the world can help us turn them to our advantage and set our economy on a sustainable and successful path, said Virág Barnabás, Vice President of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), at the presentation of the MNB publication Megatrends – The 64 Fundamental Megatrends Shaping Our World in Budapest on Thursday.

He highlighted that trend-like processes can often be observed behind daily events that are believed to be random, so it is important to recognize and identify these changes on a historical scale.

Virág Barnabás explained that four supertrends can also be highlighted within the megatrends: climate change, the technological revolution, geopolitical transformation, and demographic changes. The latter is a relatively less researched area, although it has a significant impact on the fiscal policy of states and determines a country’s consumption and savings habits, he added.

The world has exited the economic system that has defined its operation since the 1980s, he emphasized, adding that the extraordinary challenge of the 2020s, which has been plagued by crises, wars, and energy crises, is precisely the fact that a critical mass of often interconnected megatrends has reached a turning point. He cited climate change as an example of this.

According to his explanation, global warming is approaching the tipping point; last year, the average global temperature increase exceeded the one and a half degrees Celsius target set in the Paris Climate Agreement for the first time compared to the pre-industrial period.

He also spoke about the increasing speed of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and digitalization, which have revolutionized the financial system, transforming the operation of the traditional banking system. This has also affected the operation of central banks, which are working hard to develop digital central bank money worldwide, he said.

Barnabás Virág pointed out that the world economy, after its linear growth until the 18th century, showed rapid growth after the Industrial Revolution, which turned into exponential growth after the Second World War.

As an example, he mentioned that in the past 20 years, the world’s GDP output has exceeded the economic performance of the previous hundred years. Economic growth has been driven by the explosive growth of the active population in recent decades, but with the change in demographic processes, for the first time in world history, several continents, including Asia, are facing a declining population.
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