As ING Bank senior economist Péter Virovácz puts it in our report on page eight, “This is the fourth year when we expect that next year will be better.” And lest you think he is trying to be clever after the event, he also remarks that he is not “pointing fingers because a minister cannot hit the numbers, because we in the analyst community cannot either.” All that before adding, somewhat ruefully, “We can call what we have now ‘growth,’ because it is above zero, but this is not what we agreed on.”

For all that Hungary has, for years, successfully attracted significant manufacturers from East and West to set up shop here, the industrial figures remain a drag on the overall economic picture. That should not come as a»surprise. As Károly Radnai, managing partner at Andersen in Hungary, remarked during our latest CEO Boardroom roundtable discussion, for all the recent and growing interest from U.S. and Asian investors, Hungary still relies heavily on trade with the European Union, particularly with Germany. If Germany’s economy begins to fire, then so will Hungary’s. If not? Well, you don’t need me to connect those dots for you. Sticking with the economy for the moment, agriculture, battered by late frosts followed by drought on the arable side, and outbreaks of avian flu and foot-and-mouth on the pastoral, is doing no better than industry. It is services, particularly information and communication, that are keeping things in positive territory. Just.

If you ignore interest payments, the government budget is, more or less, in balance, Radnai says. And while there may be a fear that state largess ahead of the April 2026 general election could tip the balance, he doesn’t think that is inevitable, bearing in mind the government will want to maintain its investment grade ranking from the rating agencies. An acknowledged problem, according to most analysts, has been a lack of investment by local businesses and the state (and ignoring, for the moment, record levels of foreign direct investment). Will the election, therefore, bring a pause to investment while the business world waits to see who forms the next government? Our other speaker at the roundtable was Veronika Spanarova, managing director and country officer at Citi Hungary (a firm that has just announced it will bring more R&D jobs to its Budapest Global Business Hub). She makes the point that the business world focuses more on the underlying factors than on the day-to-day. “The election is a data point,” she acknowledged, but that is all it is, from a commercial rather than political point of view, and it is one of many.

It is worth remembering that, according to the polls, the two front-runners for the election are both to the right of center; whoever wins, there will be no radical policy change. And even if Tisza does replace Fidesz, no one should think the frozen EU funds would arrive on the next day. There will be a process to go through that could still take years. In the meantime, external pressures will come and go, geopolitics will play its part, and a small (if geographically well placed) and economically open country like Hungary will have to ride the waves as best it can. Which is why it might be nice to end on a more positive note. “Whatever the election result, Hungary will be fine,” Radnai told the CEO Boardroom guests.

Robin Marshall

Editor-in-chief

This editorial was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of November 14, 2025.