Economic cooperation between Hungary and Slovakia plays a key role in successfully enabling Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises to reach international markets, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and External Economic Relations Péter Szijjártó said on Wednesday.

The State Secretary, who is also Co-Chair of the Hungarian-Slovakian Joint Economic Committee, participated at the opening of the Hungarian-Slovak Business and Information Centre in Törökbálint, near Budapest.

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The Centre was created with the help of EU funding and will help companies acquire loans for their development and seek markets, as well as providing information and training. There is another centre of this kind in Dunajská Streda (Dunaszerdahely), Slovakia.

According to the State Secretary, Central Europe was the quickest in responding to Europe’s competitiveness problem and countries in the region have become the engine of growth by placing greater emphasis on work.

Slovakia is in fourth place in terms of foreign trade turnover with Hungary, amounting to EUR 8.6 billion last year, the State Secretary said, adding that some 8,000 Hungarian companies have invested a total of EUR 1.2 billion in Slovakia, whereas Slovak companies have invested EUR 150 million in Hungary.

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75 percent of Hungarian employees work for SMEs, yet their share in exports only account for 20 percent of the whole. Hungary should therefore increase the number of exporting SMEs from the current level of 2,500-3,000 to around 12,000 in the upcoming years, the State Secretary explained.

He also noted that the number of border crossing points between the two countries will be doubled by 2020, which is also important in terms of SME-cooperation.

Dusan Petrik, State Secretary of the Slovak Ministry of Economy and Co-Chair of the Joint Economic Committee, mentioned energy, electrical engineering and car manufacturing as outstanding fields of bilateral cooperation. With regard to the new Centre, he said it will diversify cooperation, help establish new firms and boost R&D cooperation.

(Prime Minister's Office)