The available monthly indicators suggest that Croatia’s real gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2019, while the labor market continued to see favorable trends, including increased employment and wages and a fall in unemployment, the Croatian National Bank (HNB) Council said a statement.

The average gross monthly wage in Bulgaria has increased by an annual 12.1% to BGN 1,313 (EUR 671) in the fourth quarter of 2019, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said in a report on Thursday. 

Hungaryʼs state debt (without Eximbank data) stood at 64.8% of GDP at the end of December 2019, down from 66.5% of GDP at the end of September and down from 68.4% a year earlier, the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) said on Monday concerning preliminary data of Hungaryʼs financial accounts, state news wire MTI reports.

Romania’s consumer price inflation eased to its lowest level in three months in January after rising in the preceding month, figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INS) showed on Thursday.

Low-cost airline Wizz Air will suspend flights to Odessa from late March to early June for security reasons, according to azuzlet.hu.

S&P Global Ratings on Friday changed the outlook on Hungaryʼs "BBB" sovereign rating to "positive" from "stable", state news wire MTI reports.

Fitch Ratings on Friday affirmed Hungaryʼs ʼBBBʼ sovereign rating, two notches over the investment grade threshold, with a ʼstableʼ outlook, state news wire MTI reports.

Downstairs at the Great Market Hall, after you pass the pungent pickles stalls and the engagingly eerie sight of live (just) if resigned-looking carp and catfish crammed into tanks at the fishmongers, you come to Bor tér (Wine square), part of Hungarikum utca, which pays homage to all things uniquely Hungarian, from Magyar foodstuffs and tipples, to Ányos Jedlik’s soda syphon, and from Zsolnay porcelain to the Rubik’s Cube.

My Hungarian partner and I met in Budapest, and spent our first Valentine’s Day together here. On that first freezing Valentine’s, we wandered Budapest from Heroes Square to the Danube, from morning to midnight. Beautiful blonde on my arm, I fantasized I was in a spy movie or a 1980s video for a kitchen sink ballad such as Ultravox’s “Vienna.”

About 50 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are expected to enter this year’s Hungarian multi-program (MMP), said Balázs Szepesi, Deputy State Secretary for Economic Development at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (ITM) in Szeged yesterday, according to gazdasagportal.hu.

Sitting is the new smoking. This mantra was either coined or popularized by Dr. James Levin of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative around 2014. As we head into another year of work, this might be a good time to think about how you sit in 2020

This decade, offices are expected to transform drastically. It is not only the changing generations that are driving this rejuvenation, but also the idea that we can work better in improved conditions. Forget open plan formats and cubicles, and get ready for home-like community offices arranged around function.

Invitech became the first company in Hungary to offer Microsoft Teams as a unified ICT service, allowing the company’s clients to get one-stop access to the app, offering cloud-based teamworking and the infrastructure inevitable for such groups to operate. The Budapest Business Journal discussed this and more with Zsolt Kemendi, COO for enterprise services at Invitech.

Cloud computing combines cost and energy efficiency within the workplace, allowing a business to grow with user-friendly and easy to install IT solutions. 

On January 14, Microsoft ended support for Windows 7, one of the most widely adopted operating systems for desktop computers and notebooks. Many home users and enterprises stuck with Windows 7 despite a very intensive pro-Windows 10 campaign by Microsoft in 2015, when it launched the new operating system.

Running a multinational hotel chain is a Sisyphean undertaking, a little like painting the Golden Gate Bridge: the task is never over; no sooner have you reached one end of the span than you need to start again at the other. Similarly, senior hotel staff are challenged on a regular basis to keep things fresh, and hotels themselves undergo renovations and makeovers to keep them up-to-date. Corinthia Hotel Budapest is doing both at the same time.

Western European automakers, facing major challenges in R&D, can improve competitiveness in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the latest study by McKinsey & Company, presented in Budapest on January 23. This could also be a big opportunity for Hungary.

In our regular Corporate Finance column, Les Nemethy and El Mehdi Hosni look into the pros and cons of factoring as a source of funding for SMEs.

Even as it completed yet another record breaking year, the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency enters a new decade working to diversify the number of key investing nations, the sectors in which investments are made, and their geographical spread across the country, against a backdrop of falling global investment, HIPA’s CEO tell the Budapest Business Journal.