Euroleasing named excl. sponsor of MEGFOSZ career guidance program

The National Association of Distributors of Agricultural Equipment and Machinery (MEGFOSZ) is the leading representative body of its segment, covering almost the entire agricultural sector through its 100 member companies. Its member companies account for almost 80% of the national agricultural machinery trade, with a volume of around HUF 300 billion.

In 2015, the organization launched the "Become an agricultural engineer!" (LETIA) program, supported by the MKB Financial Group, which includes Euroleasing, since 2017, with the aim of providing young people who finish their public education early with a new career model, encouraging them to continue their studies and to learn agricultural engineering. The complex career guidance program is divided into several parts, with joint national presentations, online games, and joint exhibitions to promote the profession. One part of the program is the annual multi-round competition (LETIA OB), which gives secondary school students studying agricultural engineering, mechanical engineering and machine repair a chance to test their skills. Their performance is rewarded with valuable prizes and professional trips.

From this year onwards, Euroleasing will be the exclusive sponsor of the program, strengthening its relationship with MEGFOSZ. The rapidly changing economic environment has reaffirmed the need for the parties to work together more than ever to strengthen the stability of the agricultural sector, the press release noted.

"Hungary's priority strategic goal is to provide food security for the Hungarian population regardless of the conditions on the world market. To achieve this, it is essential that more and more well-educated young people with the latest technical skills enter the labour market, who can ensure the long-term security of production and food processing," the parties said.

Thanks to the success of the program, the number of students enrolled in agricultural vocational secondary schools has more than doubled in recent years.

"I believe that the best investment is always an investment in the future. That is why I believe it is important to being a supporting partner of MEGFOSZ for more than five years in this program to help young people to train and promote the profession of agricultural engineering. It is clear to see that domestic agriculture has been one of the success stories of recent years, and we will continue to work to ensure that the financing solutions we offer contribute to keeping it that way," said Judit Vály, CEO of Euroleasing. "The company has an estimated market share of 35% in the agricultural machinery leasing segment, offering a wide range of financing solutions for farmers' machinery and equipment purchases that can be tailored to their specific needs."

"When we launched the predecessor of 'Become an agricultural engineer!', we knew that agriculture would need a long-term program, not a short-term campaign, to achieve the desired results. We had to find the agricultural engineers of the future, attract them to the profession and make it attractive to them so that we could lure them into the walls of our secondary and tertiary vocational training institutions. As a result, the number of agricultural engineering applicants doubled by 2019 and has continued to rise ever since. Years of consistent work have gone into this achievement - and we have many more years of work ahead of us - and we are delighted to have Euroleasing as a permanent strategic partner. This cooperation has implications not only for agriculture, but also for the processing and food industry, which is not limited to land. Farming associated with agriculture is an integral part of economic life, as is Euroleasing, since financial services are an essential part of machinery purchases," said Zsolt Harsányi, president of MEGFOSZ.