The progress of the Economic Development Operational Programme (EDOP) of the New Széchenyi Plan was reviewed by a Monitoring Committee consisting of civilians, European Commission delegates and economic actors in Balatonfüred on 13 June 2013.

The head of the Committee is Mrs Sára Nemes Hegmanné, Minister of State for State Property under the Ministry of National Development. The Monitoring Committee established that the institutions had made good progress toward the end of the 2007-2013 EU budget cycle and in the past three years managed to make up for the former lag in the utilisation of funds.     

At the meeting Mr Jordán Bocskov, head of the Managing Authority of the NDA said that the tenderers had shown extremely keen interest in the EDOP funds which can be explained by two reasons: on the one hand, it is the final year of the 2007-2013 EU budget cycle, and the institutions have been capable of managing the increased interest with adequate efficiency. As Mr Bocskov explained, almost 100% of the funds have already been announced and the allocation rate is close to this level. He also added that the full drawdown of the funds of the Operational Programme would not be endangered by any potential faulty tenders due to the availability of substantial reserve lists with projects worth supporting.        

It was briefly mentioned that compared to the former period the number of rejected applications had increased the explanation to which, according to the Ministry of National Development is quite simple: while formerly a total of 12,600 applications for the EDOP funds had been submitted in 17 months, the number of applications received in the past 6 months reached 19,900. It means that almost twice as many applications arrived in a third of the time, and this huge increase radically increased the number of rejected applications as well. Naturally it is bad news for the tenderers who would have benefited from winning support, while it is good for the country as the number of developments competing for the funds increased significantly, ensuring that support has been given for the best ideas.           

As part of the meeting the members of the Monitoring Committee visited the over 1 billion HUF worth development of the Maxon Motor Hungary Elektronikai Kft. in Veszprém which had received HUF 280 million non-refundable support under the New Széchenyi Plan. Within the framework of this complex technology development the investment implemented by the company involved the acquisition of new machinery and production lines contributing to the creation of 48 new workplaces. The altogether HUF 228 million worth research and development project of the rEVOLUTION Software Kft. in Balatonfüred had been assisted by HUF 136.8 million under the New Széchenyi Plan. As a result of the IT development a modern work process based document management platform system has been developed.

(Ministry of National Development, Communications Department)