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ORBÁN: GROWTH ‘SHOULD BENEFIT ALL’

Hungary's economic growth is a "shared success" from which everybody, including pensioners, should benefit, Viktor Orbán declared.
 

At the signing ceremony of next year’s minimum wage agreement, the prime minister said that creating a work-based economy was among his government’s top priorities. “If we have jobs, we have everything; that is the baseline,” he said, adding that the government was continually working to cut taxes on labour, and those taxes had been reduced by 25% since 2010. He said ensuring higher wages and maintaining competitiveness at the same time required “careful consideration”, adding that his government had “realised that the representation of people must be the government’s focus, and this has yielded a common basis for unions and employers to strike an agreement”.
The minimum wage will be worth 200,000 forints (EUR 548) before tax and the minimum wage for skilled workers 260,000 forints. Also, the wages of people in fostered job schemes would also be “significantly” raised, he said.
Between 2002 and 2010, during the previous governments, the real value of the minimum wage decreased by 2%, while in other countries of the region it increased by 30%, Orbán added.