A group of top economic leaders and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have established a reform alliance, Academy of Sciences President Jozsef Palinkas told a Friday news conference.
The group includes the leaders of the nine employers’ organisations represented in the National Interest Conciliation Council, the President of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the current and past presidents of the Academy, Palinkas said.
The group intends to design a comprehensive programme of reform that can be fitted into national social and economic policy programmes running from 2009 to 2013. The goal is to assist Hungary in boosting its economic performance so that incomes and quality of life approach the European Union average as quickly as possible, thus preventing any widening of the economic gap between them, Palinkas said.
The economic policy issues they plan to work on include designing ways of continuing the euro convergence programme, setting up a timetable to introducing the euro, finding alternatives to improve competitiveness, tax and employment policies, and introducing reforms to maintain equilibrium, said Palinkas.
Former Academy of Sciences President Ferenc Glatz said the group would first of all like to win over political and media players since their goal was to design the necessary forms in a manner palatable to society and executable by the political decision-makers.
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany welcomed the reform alliance in a statement issued through the government spokespersons’ office. He called it one of the most significant professional organisations to be established in recent years; one that will offer the country an opportunity to extensively discuss the challenges the country is facing.
The government is ready to cooperate with everyone who feels and accepts responsibility for the country’s future, he wrote. Noting that the world economy was racing unprecedented challenges and that the Hungarian economy could not isolate itself from them, he called for doing everything possible to lower the impact on the Hungarian people, which requires broader and stronger cooperation than at any time in the past, Gyurcsany wrote.