The Government of Hungary and IBM Hungary Kft concluded a strategic agreement on Friday; the document was signed in Budapest by Minister of State at the Ministry for National Economy Zoltán Cséfalvay and Director General Zsolt Veres of IBM Hungary.
Speaking about the agreement which covers the issue of vocational training and suppliers along with innovation, Zoltán Cséfalvay emphasized that the IBM, a company with a global reach and rich history, employs more than 400 thousand mostly highly skilled professionals, conducts significant applied as well as basic research in its 12 global research workshops, and the company owns more patent rights than any other enterprise in the world.
Zoltán Cséfalvay stressed that the innovation activities of the company often match Hungarian economic policy objectives.
The Minister of State also mentioned that that the Ministry for National Economy launched a national consultation forum on the National Innovation Strategy at the end of 2012, which aimed primarily to increase R&D expenditures as percentage of GDP and the number of research posts.
He added that the Government made a decision on 17 December last year that in the period 2014-2020 the 60 percent of EU development funds shall be spent directly on economic development instead of the current share of 20 percent. Within that, according to plans, research-development-innovation will be given a special role. 300-400bn forints are expected to be allocated to this field from EU resources. In the period 2014-2020 the management of development programmes will be assigned to the relevant ministries.
In the past year the Government introduced several measures to stimulate innovation: regulatory environment has been made more predictable, the notion of research and development has been legally defined and as of 1 January 2013 the Government exempted companies employing researchers with at least PhD titles of paying social contribution tax. In the past year tenders totalling 73bn HUF have been announced from domestic and EU funds, and the Minister of State highlighted among these the three-year tender of 22bn HUF addressing large enterprises and university research facilities.
IBM Director General Zsolt Veres stressed that the company has been on the Hungarian market for 77 years, and this period has been an era of constant development; they currently have four enterprises in Hungary.
In his words the strategic agreement concluded with the Government will assist their activities as investors and suppliers in the field of informatics.
(Ministry for National Economy)
