Asia is heading for Europe

On 10 May 2011 a large-scale conference was held at the Ministry of Rural Development, as part of the ‘Our future is in our hands’ series of programmes. The event’s goal was to introduce and vitalise Hungarian-Asian economic relations, especially our ties with India. Deputy state secretary of the Ministry for National Economy Dr Balázs Botos spoke about how important the Asian market was for Hungary. He told that there were good opportunities for cooperation, especially in the fields of water and waste management. His Excellency, Gauri Shankar Gupta, the ambassador of India to Hungary informed participants that 60 percent of India’s 1.2-billion population was below the age of 25 – and these people are already consumers. He spoke of last year’s 8.7-percent economic growth and future infrastructural developments in India in the value of 500-1.000 billion, including 40 new airports. His advice to the Hungarian government was to help small technological companies in participating tenders in India. He thinks that it would also be useful if a technology catalogue was prepared, which could be made available to Indian businesspersons and decision makers. Dr Zsolt Feldman, deputy state secretary at of the Ministry of Rural Development opined that there were good export opportunities for Hungarian wine, pork and goose liver; cooperation in the fields of animal farming and fishing could also be fruitful.