Hungary’s agri-food export exceeded 8 billion euros once again

In 2016 our agri-food export went above EUR 8 billion again. Agri-food export increased by 1.6 percent and contributed to the nation’s total export with 8.6 percent. Although import grew faster, by 6.3 percent, than export, this didn’t do harm to the strong position of Hungary’s foreign trade balance. The agri-food sector contributed HUF 2.9 billion, 29 percent to the nation’s foreign trade surplus.

 Dr. Jenő Szabó 
agricultural economist

Our oilseed export represents a value of almost EUR 500 million and the export growth in this category was 14 percent. As for our EUR 277-million vegetable export, export increased by 6 percent, while there was a 10-percent rise in Hungary’s EUR 377-million livestock export. Meat and slaughter by-product export was up 6 percent, and drink export augmented by 19 percent.

Hungary’s cereal crop export suffered the biggest drop – in both value and volume. Hungary’s revenue from corn export plunged 40 percent as 1.7 million tons less corn was exported; in value the drop was ‘only’ 26 percent.

It is also very important to note that by 2016 the proportion of unprocessed products decreased to 31 percent in our agri-food export, and at the same time the proportion of highly processed products grew to 39 percent. 83.6 percent of Hungarian agri-food export targeted the European Union’s internal market in 2016. This means a 1.3-percent drop from the level of 2015.

What about non-EU markets? In 2015 15.1 percent of our agri-food export ended up there, but by 2016 this proportion grew to 16.4 percent. Our most improving markets outside the EU were Turkey, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Russia. Asia’s share in our export augmented by 5.7 percent. In the EU our biggest market is Germany, which absorbs 15.2 percent of our total agri-food export and 18.1 percent of export to the EU, with a value of EUR 1.2 billion.