Hungary’s agricultural foreign trade and the German market

In 2011 our agricultural export expanded much more rapidly than national economic export in general. One of the they key drivers in this expansion was the German market, which with its 13-percent share, EUR 730 million worth of export from Hungary and our import source in the value of EUR 736 million has once again become Hungary’s most important agricultural foreign trade partner.

Since Hungary’s accession to the European Union in 2004 the formerly positive foreign trade balance with Germany has been negative. The reasons are manifold and include the changes in statistical methodology: products from third countries arriving at German ports are statistically considered German products when sold to other member states – this means that all the tropical fruit, soy, coffee and tea we buy from non-EU countries are registered in our foreign trade statistics as German products. Our meat export to the growing – by 23 percent – German market has been increasing dynamically and 80-81 percent of it is realised by poultry meat. In just one year we managed to sell nearly 60 percent more to Germany and it is noteworthy that 70 percent of our export was processed products. From Germany we mostly import meat (mainly pork) and dairy products. In 2011 we only imported live pig in the value of EUR 27 million (12,000 tons). We bought butter, yoghurt, cream, milk powder and cheese from Germany for EUR 103 million (62.6 tons); we imported 20,000 tons of cheese for EUR 63.5 million.