FM: Hungary, Azerbaijan breaking record in bilateral trade

Hungary and Azerbaijan are breaking record in bilateral trade, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in an exclusive interview with Trend, as he visited Azerbaijan.

“We have really good news. In the first eight months of this year, trade between Azerbaijan and Hungary approached $100 million, which has never been the case ever before if you look at the entire year. In eight months, the trade was bigger than any other entire year before. This means, we are breaking records this year, which is great and we continue to work on it,” the minister said.

When it comes to companies’ corporate investments in Azerbaijan, Szijjártó noted that there is $211 million worth of investment on behalf of the energy drinks producer company Hell.

“They are very successful in your market and they would like to locate some production here as well. Our biggest pharmaceutical company Richter has signed a production agreement with one of your pharmaceutical companies. They will produce medical and pharmaceutical products here as well. So, the Hungarian companies are interested, they started to invest, trade is breaking records and on top of that we are buying gas. It is totally new dimension in our relations,” he added.

The minister also said that Hungary is interested in piling up gas imports from Azerbaijan to some 1 billion cubic meters annually.

He noted that Hungary would like to diversify its energy sources, including the gas sources and the delivery routes.

“For us diversification doesn’t mean that there would be replacement of the current sources with other ones. Diversification for us means that we add new sources to our energy mix. Therefore, Azerbaijan is a very important partner of cooperation. We have already agreed on terms of delivering 100 million cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan to Hungary this year. We are interested in piling it up to some 1 billion cubic meters annually,” said the minister.

Unfortunately, said Szijjártó, it does not exclusively depend on Azerbaijan and Hungary.

“It depends on the infrastructure and capacity of the delivery routes through the South-Eastern Europe. We have already turned to the European Commission to help us with financial means in order to increase the capacity of the infrastructure in South-Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, so far, the EU is rejective, which is unacceptable from our perspective. They say that within 15 years gas is not going to be part of the national energy mix. We say, number one: we don’t know and number two: even if it is the case, what happens in the next 14 years? While the European Commission is putting pressure on us to diversify sources, they are not ready to take part in financing the capacity increase of the South-East European infrastructure. But we are working together with Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia in order to find solutions,” he said.