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Geography
The republic of Hungary is a land-locked
country in central Europe. It is bordered
by Austria to the west, the Slovak Republic
to the north, Romania to the east and south,
has a short border with Ukraine in the north-east
and shares its southern border with three
republics of former Yugoslavia: Serbia, Croatia
and Slovenia. Hungary has a total area of
93,033 sq.km and is one of the smaller countries
of eastern Europe.
Demography
The total population in 1992 was about 10.3
million. Hungarians (Magyars), a Turkic or
Finno-Ugrian people who settled on the Hungarian
plains in the 7th century AD., accounted
for 92% of the total population. The rest
were approximately 5% Romany (Gypsy), 2%
Germans, 1% Slovaks and 1% Southern Slavs.
The population has declined slowly but steadily
since 1981. This trend is expected to continue
despite some attempts by the government to
counter it. At present 19.5% of the Hungarian
population lives in Budapest (about 2 million
inhabitants) and 42.7% in other urban areas.
The remaining 37.8% of the population is
rural.
School is compulsory for children between
the ages of six and sixteen. In the 1980s
over 95% of all students had finished the
first eight grades by the age of 16.
In 1990, 500,000 Hungarians worked in the
private sector, and 4,795,000 in the public
sector. 29.9% total public sector workers
were engaged in industry, 18% in agriculture
and forestry, 6.9% in construction, 8.6%
in transport and communication, 10.8% in
distributive trades and 25.8% in other areas.
The average net monthly wage for white collar
workers for the second quarter to 1992 was
Ft 19,455(US$ 243), a rise of 24.5% over
the same period the previous year.
History and Political Situation
The Kingdom of Hungary was established in
the Middle Ages and occupied aterritory some
three times the size of the present-day republic.
In 1526 the King of Hungary, Luis II, was
killed by the Ottoman Turks and the Kingdom
was subsequently partitioned between the
Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs and the principality
of Transylvania. In the 1680s the Habsburg
Emperor, Leopold I, expelled the Turks from
Hungary and occupied Transylvania, reuniting
it with the Hungarian Crown. Although Hungary
was permitted a substantial degree of autonomy,
particularly after 1867, when it became Austria's
partner in the "Dual Monarchy",
the kingdom remained part of the Habsburg
domain until 1918.
Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, in November 1918, Hungary became
a fully independent state. However, by the
terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, Hungary
lost two-thirds of its pre-1918 territories
and three-fifths of its population. Hungarians
(Magyars) were left in the neighbouring states
of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.
The dismemberment of Hungary had a powerful
impact on domestic politics in the years
between the First and Second World Wars,
and continues to retain emotional resonance.
In 1919 a Communist Government was installed
in Hungary under the leadership of Bela Kun.
Following its defeat the country returned
to the uncodified "royalist" Constitution
of the pre-1918 period. The throne, however,
was declared to be vacant.
In 1944-45 Hungary was occupied by the Soviet
army. Thereafter, Communist rule was gradually
imposed on the country. Under its Communist
leader, Matyas Rakosi, Hungary was transformed
into a Soviet satellite. Forced and rapid
industrialisation and collectivisation took
place and no political opposition to the
regime was tolerated.
The mood of uncertainty brought about by
these changes contributed to the uprising
of 1956. After a spontaneous rebellion against
Soviet domination broke out in Budapest and
swiftly spread to other parts of the country,
a reformist government, led by Imre Nagy,
was installed. On 4 November, however, Soviet
troops occupied Budapest and, after bitter
fighting, overthrew the reformist Government
and Nagy was hanged.
After Janos Kadar, who had been a general
secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Worker's
Party (HSWP) since 1956, Karoly Grosz became
a HSWP leader. He gradually introduced liberal
economic reform such as New Economic Mechanism.
However, obstruction by the Communist Party
made it difficult. By mid 1980s severe economic
crisis destroyed the Communist Party's unity
and many opposition groups emerged.
The transition to Democracy in 1989 was accomplished
by peaceful means, after talks between the
HSWP and the leading opposition groups. Under
the new political system, Parliament has
386 members, of whom 176 are elected from
single member constituencies, 152 from party
lists in the counties and the rest by form
of promotional representation from among
the runners-up. The president is elected
by Parliament.
The period between the political demise of
the HSWP in October 1989 and the first free
elections since the end of the Second World
War in 1990 saw the further decline of the
renamed HSP, while several of the opposition
parties grew into well organised and dynamic
political parties. The two rounds of elections
(on March 25 and April 8, 1990) resulted
in a clear win for the Hungarian Democratic
Forum, headed by Dr Joszef Antall who became
prime minister, and its allies, the Independent
Smallholders and the Christian Democrats.
The former communists, the HSP, received
only 8.5% of the total seats in Parliament.
Economy
After the Communist takeover there was a
period of extensive nationalisation on the
Soviet model, with emphasis placed on heavy
industry, and little attention was paid to
the limits imposed by the country's natural
assets. This brought a deterioration in the
country's terms of trade, and continuing
balance-of-payment problems which forced
the government towards reform.
In 1968 Hungary introduced the "New
Economic Mechanism" which, though still
continuing to issue plans, ceased central
production directives and gave more authority
to individual enterprises. The implementation
of investment, pricing and production decisions
was decentralised and more attention was
paid to agriculture.
After 1978, there was a further spate of
economic reforms aimed at making Hungary's
production and consumption structure more
rational and attuned to world market conditions.
The need to maintain its exports to the non-socialist
world as well as to the Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance (CMEA) lay behind the
relaunching of the reform. In the 1980s the
government introduced more radical reforms
including competitive wholesale prices, reduction
of subsidies, corporate and securities law,
and value added tax.
At the beginning of the 1990s, in common
with the other Eastern European economies,
the Hungarian economy was undergoing a period
of wrenching transition to a market economy.
In the case of Hungary, however, the adoption
of market mechanisms - particularly a reduction
in the use of planning indicators and the
implementation of a rational price mechanism
- had already commenced dating from the promulgation
of the New Economic Mechanism in 1968 as
mentioned above.
Since the 1990 general election the economy's
performance has come to be a prominent feature
of Hungarian life at all levels. The central
issues of property rights, privatisation,
inflation, unemployment and debt have formed
the focal points of debate. In the spring
of 1991 the Finance Minister, Mihaly Kupa,
introduced a new four year economic programme
based on the acceleration of privatisation,
controlling inflation and preparing the groundwork
for convertibility of the forint. The programme's
aim was to fully integrate Hungary into the
world economy on a competitive basis. However,
the scale of the transformation envisaged
is enormous: in most OECD countries the state
controls or owns enterprises responsible
for some 15% of gross domestic product, while
in Hungary the state controlled or owned
up to 85% of GDP.
The association agreement with the EC signed
in late 1991 has been followed by a remarkably
rapid and successful re-orientation of Hungary's
foreign trade away from the collapsed CMEA
towards Western Europe although recently
Western European countries have been raising
non-tariff import barriers in some of the
areas where Hungary has greater comparative
advantage. Hungary's major external handicap
remains its relatively high foreign debt
($22 billion) the highest in the region on
a per capita basis.
However, developments in the course of 1992
took some of the shine off Hungary's early
successes. Having declined by 3.9% in 1990
and 10.2% in 1991, Hungary's GDP failed to
recover in 1992., and no turn around is likely
in 1993. Although the authorities continue
to have some success in cutting inflation
(with the help of a sharp decline in domestic
consumption due to fear of unemployment),
recession is proving stubborn. Another disappointment
has been the slow progress of privatisation.
Yet privatisation remains a key plank of
reform, because only through privatisation
can industrial restructuring begin, not least.
since it permits the introduction of new
management, and hence the marketing, productivity
and financial skills lacking in much of the
state sector. Capital for the private sector
remains scarce and expensive: local bank's
loan portfolios are heavily burdened with
non-performing assets and the stock market
is at best nascent in the absence of a domestic
institutional investor base.
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