Hungarian agricultural exports increased dynamically in the first half of the year

By: STA Date: 2024. 11. 05. 09:30

The measures taken to renew the Hungarian agriculture and food industry and the developments implemented have reached their goal, they continued to expand, and agricultural exports exceeded last year’s value by 6.4 percent in the first half of the year, Minister of Agriculture István Nagy announced on his social media page. In the post, the head of the ministry reminded that the government views agriculture as a strategic sector.

(Photo: drnagyistvan.hu)

That is why Hungary alone in the EU provided the maximum national co-financing of 80 percent for EU resources, thus tripling the amount of subsidies that can be used for rural development. It is also with this goal that we implement the largest agricultural and food industry development program after the change of regime since 2021. Thanks to this, in the last three years alone, we have spent HUF 400 billion on the development of livestock farms, more than HUF 100 billion on the modernization of horticultural plants, nearly HUF 230 billion on expanding food industry capacities and HUF 180 billion on the transition of agriculture to precision farming. It is essential that even the smallest farmers can take a step forward. Their support was provided by the tender for the development of small factories.

As a result, the stakeholders benefited from more than HUF 55 billion, he added. The utilization of the development resources allocated for agriculture is already visible

In the first seven months of this year, agricultural exports reached 8.17 billion euros, which is 494 million euros or 6.4% higher than the previous year. This process is also consistent with the fact that during the same period, the export sales of the food industry increased by 7 percent. Hungary’s first five largest export markets were Germany, Italy, Romania, Austria and Poland, their combined share of agricultural exports exceeded 54 percent. The minister also drew attention to the fact that the structure of exports has changed favorably, as the proportion of processed products has increased from 62% to 74.2% by 2023, and the proportion of raw material exports has decreased to 25.8%. According to the minister, it is also clear from these data that the national economy cannot be strengthened without strong agriculture. Thanks to the comprehensive renewal of the agriculture and food industry, the competitiveness of farmers and the entire country can be further enhanced.