The year of 2009 was a lost year economically for Hungarians, Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Laszlo Parragh said on Tuesday.
Speaking to local wire service MTI, Parragh said that although "Public Relations governing" prior to the spring of 2009 had seriously hurt the
economy, the new Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai had introduced a more sober, restrained policy that was more realistic.
Parragh noted that while Bajnai had restored the budget balance and had managed to avert financial collapse he had failed to move forward with structural reforms, leaving the expenditure structure unchanged, despite cutting back on amounts.
Spending is as inefficient and wasteful as it ever was, Parragh said, warning that unless the structure of public spending -- for health care,
education, and local governments -- was radically altered, the current policy was doomed to failure.
Despite efforts to improve economic dynamics, the real economy of the country declined by 8.5 percent in 2009, he said. In addition, efforts to
regroup European Union funds to liven up the economy were but marginally successful.
Parragh said Hungary's problem was that it was using EU funds according to the logic of an advanced country, when it was in fact only an emerging economy, and that should be spending on technological development, on livening up the economy and on gap reduction. Instead it was making prestige investments that it eventually might be unable to support, he said.
He also noted that the loss of export markets during the economic downturn had seriously hurt the country, costing it over 150,000 jobs.