PM Orbán's evaluation of the year 2013

“Hungary's economy has produced the best results in more than ten years, with the country arriving at the threshold of a great era of prosperity,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed this Sunday. The opposition said his speech “lacked reality."

Public utility rates had been cut for the first time in forty years, the rate of inflation has dropped to a level unprecedented for decades, and the budget deficit has been kept below 3 percent of GDP for years, an eminent achievement within the European Union, the Prime Minister underlined in a speech held one day before the start of the election campaign.

He was of the view that wages and employment have increased and the rate of economic growth regularly surpasses the EU average, adding that the Government has even increased the value of pensions.

The number of jobholders has increased by a quarter of a million, but many people are still without work, he highlighted, adding that public utility prices have been reduced but they are still higher than what he considers as the fair level. Minimum and average wages have been increased, but Hungarians are still far from having a security of livelihood and a comfortable life, he said.

In reaction to the Orbán speech, Attila Mesterházy, the PM candidate of the largest opposition group of parties, said “it was a truthless and coward speech that happened to lack today’s reality and the problems of everyday people in Hungary.” He added that Viktor Orbán quoted fudged statistics to cover up the worrisome state of the Hungarian economy.

The leader of the small opposition party LMP, András Schiffer said the prime minister “lives in a parallel reality” and failed to give account of the large-scale scandals that the government initiated and supported by misusing its two-thirds majority in parliament to favor the supporters of the government parties.