The successful “TiJöttök” programme, under which more than 2500 secondary school pupils had the opportunity to get to know options offered by a career in the field of technical or natural sciences over the past one year, has now been closed, said Minister of State Zoltán Cséfalvay at a press conference held in Budapest.

At the closing event of the programme, the Minister of State pointed out that in its innovation strategy the Government has identified it as a goal to increase the number of researchers in Hungary from the current 37 thousand to 56 thousand by the end of the decade.

In the opinion of Zoltán Cséfalvay, there is more and more demand within the Hungarian economy for natural and technical sciences. As a good example, the Minister of State mentioned that out of the 9 thousand Bosch employees working in Hungary the number of development engineers is as high as 1000, the highest figure in Europe outside Germany.

He stressed that the Government’s economic policy is aiming to place a larger emphasis – in addition to production – on innovation and R&D and turn Hungary into the R&D&I hub of the Central and Eastern European region within the shortest possible time. To this end, he added, the researchers’ contribution allowance was introduced in January last year, which exempts employers from paying social contribution tax for employees working in research jobs, and according to end-of-August data this option was utilized by 700 researchers on average.

Among the plans the Minister of State singled out that in the first quarter two calls for tenders will be announced within the innovation fund. The tender invitation processes for tenders related to the 2014-2020 EU fiscal period will be launched as of the second half of this year, of which HUF 800bn of domestic and EU funding are earmarked for R&D&I projects. These measures, he said, will make it worthwhile to be a researcher in Hungary.

National Innovation Office Chairman Endre Spaller stated that the “TiJöttök” programme will be resumed in 2014 and, according to plans, a start-up database will be established in the coming period.

The programme’s Project Manager Zsanett Ducsai-Oláh said that some 40 successful science educators and university teachers, 12 innovative enterprises and 12 research engineers of large corporations participated in the programme and 20 R&D achievements were presented for teenagers at career consultations. She emphasised as an example that researchers are working on development projects aiming to boost the competitiveness of the agricultural sector in Kaposvár and Gyöngyös, in Debrecen and Kecskemét car industry developments, the winners of international awards, were presented to pupils, while in Pécs there are ground-breaking discoveries in the field of medicine. She announced that in the coming year an innovative project competition will be launched and the cross-country road show will continue.

(Ministry for National Economy)