Gender Equality National Report Hungary - European-microfinance ...

Hungary’s membership in the EU (and even the period prior to the accession) means
a positive control in this respect, as the professional principles of the EU give a strong
orientation to the Hungarian professional apparatus. For instance, when the EU Commission
issued the JEREMIE program (with micro-credit specified), the micro-credit program, which
had been present for a long time, was given great value, which resulted in the allocation of
new funds for micro-finance purposes in 2007 (for the first time since 2000!), which exceeded
the previous resources manyfold in amount.
c.) All types of institutes aiming to assist enterprises have already been established in
Hungary; these are briefly introduced below starting with state actors and then continuing
with market actors:
• Organizations of the state administration, authorities, institutes (universities,
research institutes etc.) financed of course by the state budget
• State-owned organizations aiming to develop SMEs (e.g. the Hungarian Development
Bank, Creditguarantee, Regional development Holding etc., EXIMbank Corvinus),
and support brokerage organizations (MAG Close Corp. etc.), which are
established and continuously financed by the state.
• Non-profit development agencies (NGOs), which are not founded directly by the
state, but partly execute state functions as well. They can carry out these state
functions only with support (regional and enterprise development agencies). The
primary mission of these organizations is delivering enterprise development functions
and services that cannot be directly taken care of by state actors nor market actors.
They operate successfully in all aspects because they work neither as an
“authority” nor as "market sharks”, and they are under performance pressure
(for they receive resources only if they function well). The majority of these
organizations are established locally or regionally under local control but they
also carry out government functions on the order of and with the support of the
government.
• Chambers (of commerce and industry, agriculture and special fields etc.) They
operate as local governments following special rules, but they also carry out
important functions of economic development that the state may transfer to them and
finance.
• Entrepreneurial business federations, trade associations: (VOSZ, GYOSZ,
IPOSZ, KISOSZ, Innovation Association, Association of Business Incubators etc.)
They co-operate in this field for the protection of entrepreneurial interests and so that
they can provide services to their members.
• Enterprises providing business-type services (financial institutes, enterprises
of property development, consultancy and training etc.)
Although the institution of enterprise development has been long established, it
does not seem to operate efficiently. The operation of individual organizations is not
efficient enough; it has not helped sufficiently to strengthen the Hungarian SME sector, to
make it more competitive. The target is to correct previous mistakes and improve the
efficiency of the existing institutions, which will enhance the specialization and
professionalism of the organizations and most of all promote the approximation of
the enterprises and the supporting institution.
The main reason for the problem is the parallel finance and competition of
enterprise promotion programs and institutes in the past decade. This led to the failure
of the evolution of a co-operating institution. With a little exaggeration: every actor wanted to
do everything, thus no one could do any function properly. The individual organizations were
unable to specialize sufficiently or become professional service providers. Their operations
were significantly limited by the flaws in the professional preparation and the finance of their
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