State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and External Economic Relations Péter Szijjártó held talks on water-, agriculture-, pharmaceutics- and R&D-related agreements during his 1-and-a-half day visit to Tel-Aviv, Israel. He met with Israeli Minister of Finance Yarir Lapid, with whom he reached an agreement on strengthening investment and innovation ties between the two countries.

This year, the volume of Israeli investments in Hungary reached Euro 3bn, and the Hungarian National R&D and Innovation Strategy was heavily influenced by Israeli innovation practices. An agreement has also been reached according to which the governments of the two countries will support joint R&D programmes with Euro 1 million each, and the Hungarian Government will lanuch a new financial support plan for start-up companies next year.

Mr. Lapid informed his Hungarian guest about the prospects for extracting natural gas from Israel's gas fields and the related export plans. The State Secretary highlighted that one of the most important energy policy priorities of the Hungarian Government is diversification. He also underlined the fact that Hungarian gas storage units are already in the Government’s possession, thus allowing Hungary to be the Central-European gas distributor.

Mr. Szijjártó also met with Sven Dethlefs, the Vice-President of TEVA. The world’s No. 1 generic pharmaceuticals producer is one of Hungary’s top investors and the Government’s strategic partner, employing 3000 people in Hungary. The company is currently investing in 2 projects in Hungary worth a total of 34 bn HUF (over 112 million euros), creating 572 new jobs.

Talks between the State Secretary and the biggest Israeli water-industry companies were also held, in view the fact the Israel has developed a high level of technology in this field and their Hungarian counterparts are gaining international recognition. Further talks were held with the Israeli owners of one of the most successful Hungarian hi-tech firms, Nav N Go.

(Prime Minister’s Office)