Hungary vies to push debt below 50pc, says Orban

25 September 2012

The Hungarian government fights to reduce public debt to below 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and looks to Lithuania's economic growth as a model, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in Vilnius after talks with his Lithuanian counterpart Andrius Kubilius on Monday.

"We are waging a day-to-day war against debt," Orban said, adding that Lithuania's 38 percent public debt ratio in comparison "was freedom itself". He called Hungary's debt level of above 80 percent of GDP in 2010 -- at the time his government took power -- as something "close to debt serfdom".

Orban said that Hungary would like to follow the same path as Lithuania, but at the moment it was still fighting recession.

He added that Central Europe was looking ahead to a "fantastic decade", with prospects of belonging to Europe's "success zone". At the moment, this is better reflected in Lithuania's economic indicators than Hungary's, he said.

Text: mti, Photographer: Balázs Glódi

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