Companies are still waiting

According to a survey by Coface Hungary, from the companies asked nearly 40 percent saw their sales revenues decline by more than 10 percent in 2009. Another 10 percent of company heads were of the opinion that their export revenues fell by 5-10 percent. However, 21 percent of companies said they could feel the upturn on their export markets in 2010. Hungary’s GDP growth is also the result of export expansion – domestic consumption will probably continue to stagnate in the near future. Despite rosier outlooks on their export markets, 36 percent of company heads said an export revival would not happen before 2011. A high proportion of those asked named international companies (14 percent) and multinational companies (17 percent) as their export targets. Lack of financial resources is the biggest obstacle to competitiveness – said 15 percent of exporting companies; 25 percent said it was the absorption capacity of export markets that should increase. The experts of Coface Hungary agreed with this opinion, but they also called attention to the fact that Hungarian enterprises need to start looking further than the European Union’s boundaries. They could start exporting to the Balkans and Russia, as these markets constitute a manageable risk since they are relatively close to Hungary. If we look further China, Korea, Southeast Asia and South America can also be potential export markets for Hungarian products. 23 percent of companies in the survey said that a stable exchange rate of the forint is the prerequisite of export growth.