Chapter XXIII: Nemzetgazdasági Minisztérium (Ministry of National Economy)

Overview

Chapter XXIII funds the Nemzetgazdasági Minisztérium (Ministry of National Economy, NGM) and the institutions under its direction: the tax authority, the central treasury, the central procurement directorate, the accreditation authority, the consumer-protection authority, the concession office, and a large block of chapter-managed business-development, tourism, and industrial programmes.

Total expenditure for the chapter is 1,161,281.4 millió Ft — roughly 1,161 milliárd Ft. Total revenue is 163,198.4 millió Ft, leaving a chapter balance of −998,083.0 millió Ft funded from general tax. Almost the whole revenue figure is programme reflux — repayments and self-financing inside the Széchenyi Kártya credit-guarantee schemes and the tourism programme — not fees charged for a service.

The chapter is best read in three parts. First, the tax-and-treasury machinery — NAV and the Magyar Államkincstár — which together account for about 399 milliárd Ft and are the operational core of rule-of-law fiscal administration. Second, the central procurement and concession bodies — KEF and the Nemzeti Koncessziós Iroda — whose existence is evidence of how much the state buys and how much it licenses, rather than a solution to anything. Third, the chapter-managed programmes — a 516 milliárd Ft envelope dominated by the Széchenyi Kártya credit schemes (345 milliárd Ft) and tourism development (107 milliárd Ft), which is where the discretionary-allocation question becomes sharpest.

Expenditure Analysis

Nemzetgazdasági Minisztérium igazgatása (Ministry administration)

• Current allocation: 18,274.8 millió Ft (personnel 14,286.8; employer contributions 2,110.8; operating 1,816.1; other operating 32.3; investment 8.8; other capital 20.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The core ministry apparatus that drafts tax law, prepares the budget, and administers fiscal policy is part of the constitutional machinery of government — the executive function the legislature funds to give effect to its decisions. The classical-liberal frame does not contest a finance ministry; it contests what the ministry then does with discretionary spending lines, which are examined separately below. Keep here is not an endorsement of the chapter-managed programmes the ministry administers; it is recognition that a state which collects taxes and enforces contracts needs a department to run the fiscal function.
• Transition mechanism: None. Operating-efficiency review applies — a ministry whose discretionary programme portfolio shrinks under the recommendations below needs fewer programme-administration staff — but the core line is a Keep.
• Affected groups: Ministry civil servants; no displacement from the classification itself.

Nemzeti Adó- és Vámhivatal (National Tax and Customs Administration, NAV)

• Current allocation: 304,301.5 millió Ft (personnel 193,109.6; employer contributions 25,440.2; operating 62,496.3; benefit payments 2.9; other operating 113.8; investment 21,936.5; renovation 1,010.2; other capital 192.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: Tax assessment and collection is the revenue side of every function the state legitimately performs. A state that secures rights, enforces contracts, and finances courts and defence must be able to collect the taxes that pay for them; an unfunded rights-protection function is not a function. NAV is the institution that does this, and customs enforcement at the external border is a rule-of-law function in its own right. The classical-liberal objection is not to the collector but to the complexity and the rates of what is collected — and that objection belongs to the revenue chapters (XLII and the tax-policy lines), not here.
• Transition mechanism: None for the line. One observation on direction: a simpler tax code is a smaller compliance-administration burden. Hungary’s combined labour wedge — employer SzocHo at 13%, SZJA at 15%, employee TB-járulék at 18.5% — means roughly 41 Ft of every 100 Ft of employer labour cost reaches the state before the worker spends a forint of take-home pay (SzocHo 11.5 Ft + SZJA 13.3 Ft + TB-járulék 16.4 Ft = 41.2 Ft, derived from gross wage ≈ 88.5 Ft per 100 Ft employer cost); ÁFA at 27% then captures a further 13-14 Ft of the original 100 on most of what is spent, and excise duty adds a substantial further share — typically 30-60% depending on the product — to the shelf or pump price of fuel, alcohol, and tobacco. The cumulative effective state take from full employer compensation is in the 55-60% range for a typical working household. A tax system that took less and took it through fewer instruments would need a smaller NAV; the saving is real but it is downstream of tax-policy reform, not a cut to the collection agency.
• Affected groups: NAV staff (the largest single workforce in the chapter); no displacement from the Keep classification.

Magyar Államkincstár (Hungarian State Treasury)

• Current allocation: 94,399.9 millió Ft (personnel 45,449.3; employer contributions 6,647.8; operating 35,630.0; other operating 672.8; investment 5,878.5; renovation 100.0; other capital 21.5)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The Treasury operates the central account through which state payments and receipts flow, administers public-sector payroll and pension disbursement, and runs the family-support and other benefit payment channels. This is the cash-management infrastructure of the state — the function that gives effect to whatever the legislature has decided to spend. It is a Keep on the same logic as NAV: the disbursement apparatus is legitimate even where individual transfers it disburses are not. If the reform package elsewhere in the budget reduces the number of discretionary transfer programmes the Treasury administers, the Treasury’s own workload falls; the line then becomes a candidate for operating-cost review, not a phase-out.
• Transition mechanism: None. Operating-efficiency review only.
• Affected groups: Treasury staff; no displacement from the classification.

Közbeszerzési és Ellátási Főigazgatóság (Central Procurement and

Supply Directorate, KEF)

• Current allocation: 215,860.0 millió Ft (personnel 15,124.9; employer contributions 2,075.1; operating 194,448.3; investment 2,603.2; renovation 1,608.5)

• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)

• Rationale: The arithmetic here demands attention. Of the 215.9 milliárd Ft envelope, personnel and employer contributions are only 17.2 milliárd Ft; the operating line (dologi kiadások) is 194.4 milliárd Ft — over 90% of the total. KEF performs two functions: it runs the centralised public-procurement system as the state’s central purchasing body, concluding framework agreements that other government bodies draw down against; and it provides building operation, maintenance, vehicle fleet, and logistics services for ministries — managing a large portfolio of centrally held government buildings. The 194.4 milliárd Ft operating line is overwhelmingly the cost of buying those facility-management services and goods on behalf of other bodies.

  KEF is the kind of body the framework treats with particular care: a central purchasing authority is not a solution to a problem; it is evidence of the scale of the underlying problem. The state buys so much, across so many bodies, that it has created a directorate to aggregate the purchasing. The centralisation argument — small bodies get the framework-contract price — is real, but it is the second-best fix for a first-best failure. Each ministry running its own facilities, on its own budget, faces the price it pays directly; an aggregating intermediary mutes that signal. The cleaner arrangement is for each government body to procure its own facility-management services from the competitive market under ordinary procurement rules, with the property portfolio devolved to the using bodies or to a slim asset-management function. The facility-management market in Hungary is genuinely competitive; there is no network-economic element here that requires a single state buyer.

  This is the pattern where an administrative body is mistaken for the cure when it is part of the construction. The honest classification is phase-out parallel to the underlying activity: as ministries take their own facilities budgets and procure directly, KEF’s aggregating role dissolves.

• Transition mechanism: Four-year phase-out. The 4-year horizon is set by the framework-agreement cycle: KEF’s standing framework contracts with suppliers are typically multi-year, and existing draw-downs by client bodies must run their contractual course rather than being abrogated. Year 1: devolve the facilities and procurement budgets of the largest client ministries; KEF’s operating envelope contracts as those bodies procure directly. Years 2-4: complete the devolution as remaining framework agreements expire and are not renewed centrally. The 15.1 milliárd Ft personnel line (plus 2.1 milliárd Ft employer contributions, 17.2 milliárd Ft combined) is the protected payroll component: KEF’s roughly 1,200-1,400 staff have transferable facilities-management, procurement, and logistics skills, and severance-with-overlap — full state salary for 24 months, with the right to take private-sector employment and keep both incomes — fits the case. Many would transfer with the devolved functions to the client ministries or to the private facility-management firms that take over the contracts. The 194.4 milliárd Ft operating line is not severance-protected: it is the cost of goods and services bought on behalf of others, and it does not disappear so much as move — the client bodies still need facilities, but they procure them directly rather than through KEF. The genuine fiscal saving is the elimination of the aggregating layer’s own overhead and the competitive-tendering discipline restored to each body, not the full 215.9 milliárd Ft.

• Affected groups: KEF’s permanent staff (roughly 1,200-1,400 on the facilities, procurement, and logistics functions); supplier firms holding current framework agreements (protected by contract run-off); client ministries, which gain direct budget responsibility for their own facilities. The schedule reflects the net saving conservatively: the operating line is treated as continuing expenditure that relocates rather than vanishes, so the year-by-year net saving is the payroll and aggregation-overhead component, not the gross envelope.

Nemzeti Koncessziós Iroda (National Concession Office, NKOI)

• Current allocation: 991.2 millió Ft (personnel 172.6; employer contributions 23.7; operating 790.0; investment 4.9)

• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)

• Rationale: The NKOI was established in 2020 to operate a unified procedural and supervisory system for the state’s concession activities — it runs tender procedures and concludes concession contracts for motorways, casinos, and waste management when the government designates it to do so.¹ The body is the clearest example in the chapter of a regulator whose existence is evidence of an underlying problem rather than a solution to it. A concession is a state-granted exclusive right — to operate gaming, to collect motorway tolls, to handle waste in a designated area. The concession office exists because the state has chosen to convert a set of activities into state-licensed monopolies and then needs an apparatus to allocate the licences.

  The classical-liberal reading runs through the activities, not the office. Gaming does not require a concession regime; it requires ordinary licensing and the criminal law. Motorway operation is a genuine infrastructure question, but the concession is a contracting choice, not a necessity, and it can be handled by the relevant transport authority within ordinary public-procurement rules. Waste management is a competitive service in most of Europe; the concession regime constructs the local monopoly that the office then administers. Where the state stops constructing concession monopolies, the office that allocates them has nothing to allocate. The honest classification is phase-out parallel to the deregulation of the underlying concession regimes — the office winds down as the activities it licenses are returned to ordinary licensing or competitive procurement.

• Transition mechanism: Three-year phase-out, tracking the run-off of existing concession contracts. The office’s small payroll — 172.6 millió Ft plus 23.7 millió Ft employer contributions, 196.3 millió Ft combined — is the severance-with-overlap component: roughly 15-25 staff with transferable legal, procurement, and contract-administration skills, 24 months of full salary with the right to take new employment and keep both incomes. Existing concession contracts run to their contractual terms; no contract is abrogated. The 790.0 millió Ft operating line — the advisory and procedural cost of running concession tenders — ends as new tenders cease. Year 1 carries the residual cost of in-flight tender procedures; years 2-3 wind the office to closure as the last designated procedures conclude.

• Affected groups: The office’s small permanent staff (roughly 15-25); current concession holders, whose contracts are unaffected (protected by run-off); the transport, gaming, and waste-management authorities that absorb residual contract-administration functions.

Nemzeti Akkreditáló Hatóság (National Accreditation Authority, NAH)

• Current allocation: 1,081.9 millió Ft (personnel 652.1; employer contributions 85.7; operating 332.1; other operating 12.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The NAH is the body that accredits laboratories, certification bodies, and inspection bodies — confirming that a calibration laboratory or a product-testing house meets the relevant ISO/IEC standards.² Accreditation under the EU regulatory framework is, by design, a single national function: Regulation (EC) 765/2008 requires each member state to operate one national accreditation body and prohibits competition between accreditation bodies, precisely so that an accreditation certificate carries the same meaning across the single market.³ This is one of the rare cases where the single-body structure is not a state-constructed monopoly that the framework would dissolve but a recognised-standard function whose value depends on its being singular. The body also largely cost-recovers: the NAH charges administrative-service fees for accreditation, scope extension, and supervisory procedures, including a 100,000 Ft annual registration fee per accredited status.² The line is modest — 1.08 milliárd Ft — and the function is a recognised precondition of participation in the EU conformity- assessment system. Keep, with the standing recommendation that the fee schedule be set to recover the full cost so the call on general tax falls toward zero.
• Transition mechanism: None. Fee-schedule review to move the body toward full cost recovery.
• Affected groups: Accredited laboratories and certification bodies (the fee-payers); no displacement.

Nemzeti Kereskedelmi és Fogyasztóvédelmi Hatóság (National Trade and

Consumer Protection Authority, NKFH)

• Current allocation: 3,814.2 millió Ft (personnel 1,854.5; employer contributions 255.0; operating 1,174.7; investment 530.0)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: Consumer-protection enforcement sits in a genuine middle. Part of what a trade-and-consumer authority does is rule-of-law work — policing fraud, false labelling, and the safety of goods is enforcement of the implied terms of voluntary exchange, and that has a defensible claim on tax financing. Part of it is paternalistic market supervision that substitutes administrative judgement for the discipline of competition, reputation, and the ordinary civil law of contract and tort. The line is not large — 3.81 milliárd Ft — and the administrative cost of disentangling the legitimate enforcement core from the supervisory accretion would be a multi-year statutory exercise out of proportion to the sum. A nominal freeze holds the allocation flat; at 2-3% inflation it erodes the line’s real value by roughly 20-25% over a decade, forcing the authority to concentrate on its fraud-and-safety enforcement core as the budget tightens in real terms. The 530.0 millió Ft investment line should be scrutinised against that priority.
• Transition mechanism: Hold nominal allocation at 3,814.2 millió Ft. Pair with a statutory review separating the fraud-and-product-safety enforcement mandate (rule-of-law, retained) from discretionary market supervision (candidate for repeal).
• Affected groups: NKFH staff; consumers, who retain the fraud-and-safety enforcement function.

Fogyasztóvédelemmel kapcsolatos feladatok (Consumer-protection tasks)

• Current allocation: 419.2 millió Ft
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: A small chapter-managed line funding consumer-protection programme activity adjacent to the NKFH’s institutional budget. Classified consistently with the authority itself: the legitimate fraud-and-safety enforcement core is retained, the line is held nominal, and real erosion concentrates spending on the enforcement function over the decade. The sum is too small for an elimination exercise to be worth the administrative cost.
• Transition mechanism: Hold nominal allocation; fold into the NKFH statutory review.
• Affected groups: Programme recipients; consumers.

Széchenyi Kártya Programok (Széchenyi Card Programmes)

• Current allocation: 324,690.0 millió Ft (with 93,028.0 millió Ft of associated programme revenue)

• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)

• Rationale: This is the single largest line in the chapter and the one where the discretionary-allocation question is sharpest. The Széchenyi Kártya Program is a state interest-rate subsidy scheme: KAVOSZ Zrt. operates it, commercial banks lend through it, and the central budget pays the difference between the market interest rate and a fixed, politically set rate offered to small and medium enterprises — currently a uniform 3% net annual rate.⁴ The 2026 interest-subsidy envelope was raised from the prior year’s level, and the scheme’s appeal to borrowers is, by the operator’s own account, driven primarily by that favourable subsidised rate.⁴

  Follow the mechanism. The state borrows — or forgoes other spending — to pay down the interest cost on private commercial credit. The visible beneficiary is the SME that takes a loan at 3% rather than the market rate. The cost-bearer is the general taxpayer who funds the subsidy, and a second cost-bearer is structurally hidden: the credit market itself. An administratively fixed 3% rate is a price control on the cost of capital. It does not reveal which borrowers and which projects can bear the true cost of credit; it conceals that information. Capital flows toward the firms and projects that clear at the subsidised rate rather than toward the firms and projects that would clear at a price reflecting genuine scarcity and genuine risk. The producer cannot signal the real cost of lending to a given borrower, and the borrower cannot signal that a project is worth undertaking at the unsubsidised rate. The result is capital misallocated toward the margin the subsidy serves — and an SME sector that becomes structurally dependent on the continuation of the subsidy, because firms that built their plans around 3% credit cannot easily absorb its withdrawal. The operator’s own framing — that the scheme runs at the scale it does because of the subsidised rate — is the admission that the demand is for the subsidy, not for credit the market would otherwise price and supply.

  There is a public-choice layer as well. A subsidy administered through a designated operator, drawn down through a national office network, with the rate set by political decision, concentrates a visible benefit on an organised and identifiable constituency — borrowing SMEs and the operator — while spreading the cost diffusely across every taxpayer. That structure produces a standing lobby for the line’s preservation independent of whether subsidised credit is the most productive use of the money.

  None of this means small-firm access to capital does not matter. It means the state interest-rate subsidy is the wrong instrument. The classical- liberal alternative is a deeper, less distorted capital market: the binding constraint on Hungarian SME investment is the cost and availability of capital generally, and that is a function of the savings rate, the security of property, and the absence of inflation and rate volatility — not of a state subsidy that papers over a high underlying rate. The reform direction is to address the underlying cost of capital, not to subsidise it selectively.

• Transition mechanism: Five-year linear phase-out. The horizon is set by the loan book: existing subsidised loans carry multi-year terms and the state’s interest-subsidy commitment on a loan already drawn must be honoured for that loan’s life — abrogating the subsidy mid-term would breach the terms on which firms borrowed in good faith. New subsidised lending stops at the start of the phase-out; the budget line then declines as the existing loan book runs off. The 93,028.0 millió Ft of associated programme revenue is reflux within the scheme — guarantee fees and repayments — and tapers in parallel as the book shrinks. A five-year linear glide approximates the weighted-average run-off of a typical SME loan book. During the phase-out, the savings should be redirected toward the structural capital-market reforms that make subsidised credit unnecessary.

• Affected groups: SMEs with existing subsidised loans (protected — their loans run to term on the agreed subsidy); SMEs that would have taken future subsidised loans (face the market rate, which the phase-out makes the honest planning basis); KAVOSZ Zrt. as operator; the commercial banks that originate the loans, which retain the lending business at market rates.

Agrár Széchenyi Kártya Konstrukciók (Agricultural Széchenyi Card schemes)

• Current allocation: 20,820.3 millió Ft
• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)
• Rationale: The agricultural variant of the Széchenyi Kártya interest- subsidy mechanism, directed at farm and agribusiness borrowers. The analysis of the main Széchenyi Kártya line applies in full: it is an administratively set price on the cost of agricultural credit, with the same capital-misallocation and same dependence dynamics. There is no feature of agriculture that converts a credit subsidy from a price control into a legitimate state function. Phase out on the same five-year loan-book run-off schedule as the main scheme.
• Transition mechanism: Five-year linear phase-out tracking the existing agricultural-loan book; no new subsidised lending from the start of the phase-out; existing loans honoured to term.
• Affected groups: Agricultural borrowers with existing subsidised loans (protected to term); future agricultural borrowers (face market credit); KAVOSZ Zrt.; agricultural lenders.

Intézményi kezességi díjtámogatások (Institutional guarantee-fee

subsidies)

• Current allocation: 5,200.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)
• Rationale: A subsidy of the guarantee fees charged on state-backed SME credit guarantees — the same family of intervention as the Széchenyi Kártya schemes, one layer further in. The state guarantees the loan, a guarantee fee is charged for that guarantee, and this line then subsidises the fee. It is a subsidy of a subsidy. The honest classification is phase-out on the same loan-book run-off logic as the schemes whose guarantees it supports: existing guarantees run their term, no new fee subsidies are written.
• Transition mechanism: Five-year linear phase-out aligned with the run-off of the guaranteed loan book; existing guarantee-fee commitments honoured.
• Affected groups: SMEs with existing guaranteed loans (protected); guarantee institutions; future borrowers (face the unsubsidised guarantee fee, or unguaranteed market credit).

MFB hitelprogramok (Magyar Fejlesztési Bank loan programmes)

• Current allocation: 500.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: A small line funding subsidised lending programmes channelled through the Magyar Fejlesztési Bank (Hungarian Development Bank). State development-bank lending substitutes administrative project selection for the market’s pricing of risk and return, directing capital toward projects chosen by the bank rather than projects that clear a market test. The line is small, so the phase-out is correspondingly short — three years to allow in-flight programme commitments to conclude — but the classification follows the mechanism, not the size.
• Transition mechanism: Three-year phase-out; existing programme commitments run to conclusion; no new subsidised programmes.
• Affected groups: Borrowers under existing MFB programmes (protected to term); the MFB.

Minimálbér emeléshez kapcsolódó szociális hozzájárulási adó támogatás

(SzocHo subsidy linked to the minimum-wage increase)

• Current allocation: 12,000.0 millió Ft

• Classification: Phase-Out (2 years)

• Rationale: This line is worth reading slowly, because it reveals a mechanism the rest of the budget keeps implicit. The state mandates a minimum-wage increase. That increase raises employers’ total labour cost — not only the gross wage, but the employer-side social contribution (SzocHo) levied on top of it. The state then partially compensates employers for the contribution cost its own mandate created. The budget is, in effect, paying one part of the state to soften the cost another part of the state imposed.

  If a payroll levy on a mandated wage increase is burdensome enough that the state must rebate it, the levy itself is the burden — and the rebate is an admission of that, applied selectively and temporarily rather than addressed at the source. The honest correction is not a 12 milliárd Ft compensation line; it is a lower SzocHo rate, applied generally, visible to every employer and every worker. The employer-side contribution is a tax on labour that falls, in incidence, on the worker: it is part of the wedge between what an employer pays to employ someone and what that worker takes home, and over time it is wages that absorb it. A worker at the median monthly gross wage already loses roughly 37 Ft of every 100 Ft of total employer labour cost to the payroll wedge before any take-home pay is spent. A targeted, temporary rebate of one slice of that wedge for one cohort of employers does not change the structure; it adds an administrative layer on top of it.

• Transition mechanism: Two-year phase-out. The compensation was framed as transitional support tied to a specific minimum-wage adjustment; honouring the commitments already made to employers who planned around it argues for a short glide rather than an immediate stop. The honest destination is a structurally lower SzocHo rate that removes the need for the rebate — that reform belongs to the tax-policy chapters, and the saving from this line should be counted toward funding the general rate reduction, not retained.

• Affected groups: Employers receiving the current compensation (protected by the two-year glide); workers, who bear the SzocHo wedge in suppressed wages and are the ultimate beneficiaries of addressing it at the rate rather than through a rebate.

Egyéb vállalkozásfejlesztési feladatok (Other business-development tasks)

• Current allocation: 5,306.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: A discretionary chapter-managed business-development line with no defined statutory mandate, no contractual counterparties whose reliance must be honoured, and no dependency chain tying citizens’ life plans to it at scale. “Business development” administered as a discretionary budget allocation by political officeholders is precisely the subjective allocation the framework identifies: the ministry decides which firms, sectors, or projects receive support, in the absence of any market price signal that would reveal where the money is best deployed. The reform direction for business development is a lower and simpler tax burden and secure property rights, applied to every firm equally — not a discretionary pot allocated case by case.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. No severance component — the line funds programme grants, not a payrolled institution; the administering staff sit within the ministry’s igazgatás line.
• Affected groups: Firms that would have received discretionary grants — a benefit, not a contractual right; no protected reliance.

Iparfejlesztési feladatok (Industrial-development tasks)

• Current allocation: 1,148.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: Classified on the same basis as Egyéb vállalkozásfejlesztési feladatok above: a discretionary ministerial allocation with no market-price signal, no statutory mandate, and no protected counterparties. Immediate cut.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle.
• Affected groups: Recipient firms — a discretionary benefit, not a protected right.

Technológia fejlesztési feladatok (Technology-development tasks)

• Current allocation: 574.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: Classified on the same basis as Egyéb vállalkozásfejlesztési feladatok above: a discretionary ministerial allocation with no market-price signal, no statutory mandate, and no protected counterparties. Immediate cut.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle.
• Affected groups: Recipient firms or projects — a discretionary benefit.

Divat- és kreatívipart érintő vállalkozásfejlesztési programok

(Fashion and creative-industry business-development programmes)

• Current allocation: 3,144.7 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: A discretionary subsidy directed at firms in the fashion and creative industries. There is no economic feature of fashion or the creative industries that distinguishes them from any other sector competing for capital and customers on the open market — and so no basis for the state to single them out for support. This is a sector-specific discretionary allocation: the visible beneficiary is the set of fashion and creative firms that receive grants; the cost-bearer is every taxpayer, including the wage-earner whose own SZJA and SzocHo fund a transfer to an industry the state has decided to favour. The reform direction is a level competitive field — the same tax treatment, the same property protection, the same contract enforcement — for fashion firms and engineering firms alike.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. No protected counterparties; grants are discretionary benefits, not contractual rights.
• Affected groups: Fashion and creative-industry firms receiving current grants — a discretionary benefit, not a protected right.

Turisztikai fejlesztési feladatok (Tourism-development tasks)

• Current allocation: 106,619.1 millió Ft (operating 54,617.3; capital 52,001.8; with 52,001.8 millió Ft of associated revenue against the capital component)

• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)

• Rationale: At 107 milliárd Ft this is the second-largest line in the chapter and the largest of the discretionary-allocation programmes. Tourism development funded as a state programme directs capital toward tourism infrastructure, attractions, and destination projects chosen administratively. Tourism is a competitive consumer-services industry: hotels, attractions, restaurants, and tour operators compete for visitors and earn their return — or fail to — on the market. The state cannot determine, in the absence of price signals, which tourism projects warrant investment; developers, hoteliers, and investors who bear the gain and the loss can. When the state directs 107 milliárd Ft into tourism projects of its own selection, it bids capital, construction capacity, and labour away from whatever else those resources would have built — the houses not built, the manufacturing capacity not expanded — and the unseen cost is the foregone alternative use. Where a tourism project is genuinely viable, private capital will fund it; where it is not, the subsidy is the only thing keeping it standing.

  The line is classified phase-out rather than immediate cut because the capital component — 52 milliárd Ft of investment, with a matching 52 milliárd Ft of associated revenue — is plainly tied to multi-year development projects already under construction or contracted. Abrupt cancellation would strand half-built projects and breach commitments to contractors. The four-year horizon allows in-flight projects to complete.

• Transition mechanism: Four-year phase-out. Year 1: no new tourism- development commitments; the operating component (54.6 milliárd Ft of destination marketing, programme administration, and grants) is cut hardest and fastest, as it has no construction-contract reliance. Years 2-4: the capital component runs off as contracted projects reach completion; no new capital projects are initiated. The associated 52 milliárd Ft of revenue is project-linked reflux and tapers with the capital spend. The realistic destination is a tourism sector financed by the hoteliers, developers, and investors who earn the returns.

• Affected groups: Contractors and developers on in-flight projects (protected by contract run-off through the four-year glide); destination- marketing recipients and grant beneficiaries (a discretionary benefit, cut in year 1); the tourism industry, which continues on private investment.

Hozzájárulás a Művészetek Palotájának működtetéséhez (Contribution to

the operation of the Palace of Arts)

• Current allocation: 16,353.6 millió Ft

• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)

• Rationale: An operating contribution to the Művészetek Palotája (Müpa), the Budapest concert and arts venue. The Müpa generates roughly half of its total revenue from its own sources — ticket sales and corporate partnerships — with the remainder coming from the state.⁵ That fact is the case for the classification: a venue that already earns half its income from voluntary payment by the people who actually value its programming has a demonstrated path to earning more of it. Concert-hall programming is a contestable cultural-services activity; it is not a rights-protection function, not a constitutional precondition, and not a response to irreversible involuntary harm. The 16.4 milliárd Ft state operating contribution funds, in part, the gap between what the venue’s audience chooses to pay and what the venue chooses to spend — a gap the state fills by drawing on the general taxpayer, including taxpayers who never attend.

  The within-class point is worth stating plainly. The audience for a flagship concert hall skews toward higher-income, higher-education households; the SZJA and SzocHo that fund the operating subsidy are paid broadly across the wage distribution. A worker at the median wage who never sets foot in the venue contributes, through general tax, to subsidised tickets enjoyed disproportionately by households several deciles above them. This is not an argument against the arts; it is an argument that the people who value the programming should fund more of it directly — through ticket prices, memberships, and the philanthropic and corporate support that cultural institutions across Europe rely on.

• Transition mechanism: Five-year phase-out of the state operating contribution. The venue already covers roughly half its costs from own revenue; the glide gives it five years to close the remaining gap through ticket-pricing, expanded corporate partnership, philanthropic fundraising, and programming discipline. The schedule reduces the state contribution in even steps; the protected party during the transition is the venue’s permanent staff and its forward programming commitments, both of which a five-year horizon accommodates. Note this line is the state contribution to operation; any separate availability-fee obligation under the venue’s underlying PPP arrangement is a distinct contractual question not visible in this chapter’s tables and would need its own treatment.

• Affected groups: The Müpa’s management and staff (five years to adjust the revenue model); the venue’s audience (faces ticket prices closer to cost); cultural philanthropy and corporate sponsors (a larger role).

Budai Egészségközpont Zrt. beruházása (Buda Health Centre investment)

• Current allocation: 6,883.8 millió Ft (capital)
• Classification: Phase-Out (2 years)
• Rationale: A capital line funding a state investment in the Budai Egészségközpont Zrt. A state equity investment in a discrete healthcare facility is a discretionary capital allocation: the state is directing capital into a specific asset of its own selection. The classification is phase-out rather than immediate cut only because a capital investment in a facility under construction or commitment cannot be halted cleanly without stranding the works and breaching contractor commitments. The two-year horizon allows the committed phase of the investment to complete; no further state capital is committed beyond it. The standing recommendation is that healthcare facility provision be financed and operated through the arrangements examined in the health chapters, not through ad hoc capital injections routed through the economy ministry’s chapter.
• Transition mechanism: Two-year phase-out; the committed construction phase completes; no new state capital committed.
• Affected groups: Contractors on the committed works (protected by run-off); the facility operator.

Nemzetközi tagdíjak (International membership dues)

• Current allocation: 9,713.8 millió Ft
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: Membership dues to the international organisations Hungary belongs to in the economic-policy domain — bodies whose membership flows from treaty and international-agreement commitments. While a member, the state is bound to pay the assessed dues; this is a treaty-compliance obligation of the kind the rule-of-law principle itself recognises. Classified Keep on that basis. A separate, legitimate policy question — whether Hungary should remain a member of any particular organisation — is a matter for the relevant treaty review, not a budget-line phase-out; while membership stands, the dues are owed.
• Transition mechanism: None. Any change runs through the relevant membership/treaty review, not through this line.
• Affected groups: None from the classification.

Társadalmi párbeszéddel kapcsolatos feladatok (Social-dialogue tasks)

• Current allocation: 673.4 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: A line funding “social-dialogue” activities — the state-financed apparatus of consultation forums between government, employer associations, and trade unions. Employer associations and trade unions are voluntary membership organisations; their members can and do fund their own representation, and the forums in which they engage government do not require a state budget line to exist. State financing of the dialogue process is a transfer to organised interest groups, funded diffusely from general tax. The line is small and has no protected contractual counterparties — an immediate cut on principle.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. The consultation forums continue; the participating organisations fund their own participation, as voluntary associations do.
• Affected groups: Employer associations and trade unions that currently draw on the line — voluntary organisations able to fund their own activity.

Egyéb ágazati feladatok (Other sectoral tasks)

• Current allocation: 1,203.2 millió Ft
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: An undifferentiated residual chapter-managed line for “other sectoral tasks” — a discretionary allocation with no defined mandate, no named programme, and no protected counterparties. A budget line whose name is “other” and whose content is at the ministry’s discretion is the signature form of subjective allocation by political officeholders. Eliminate; where a genuine statutory function hides inside it, that function can be identified, named, and funded explicitly through its own line.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle.
• Affected groups: Recipients of discretionary “other” allocations — no protected reliance.

Egyes korábban kihelyezett támogatások elszámolása (Settlement of

certain previously disbursed supports)

• Current allocation: 857.8 millió Ft (with a matching 857.8 millió Ft of associated revenue)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: A technical accounting line for the settlement and reconciliation of supports disbursed in earlier years — the matching 857.8 millió Ft revenue figure confirms it is a pass-through reconciliation, not a fresh programme allocation. Closing out previously disbursed support contractually requires reconciliation; this is the administrative tail of past commitments, not new spending. Classified Keep as a technical necessity; it falls away naturally as the earlier supports it reconciles are fully settled.
• Transition mechanism: None. Self-extinguishing as past supports are reconciled.
• Affected groups: None.

Fejezeti általános tartalék (Chapter general reserve)

• Current allocation: 300.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: A small general contingency reserve within the chapter. A modest, bounded reserve against in-year contingencies is ordinary prudent budget management for a chapter of this size, and at 300 millió Ft it is proportionate. Classified Keep. The reserve’s appropriate size will fall as the chapter’s discretionary programme portfolio shrinks under the recommendations above — a smaller chapter needs a smaller contingency — but that is a future calibration, not a phase-out.
• Transition mechanism: None. Recalibrate downward as the chapter shrinks.
• Affected groups: None.

Egyetemes postai szolgáltató méltánytalan többletterhének megtérítése

(Compensation for the unfair excess burden of the universal postal service provider)

• Current allocation: 6,051.0 millió Ft

• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)

• Rationale: This line compensates Magyar Posta, as the designated universal postal service provider, for the “unfair excess burden” of the universal-service obligation — the net cost of being required to deliver to every address in the country, including unprofitable rural routes. Under the postal-services framework, where the net cost of the universal service exceeds 1% of the provider’s universal-service-related costs, that excess is the “unfair excess burden”, and the central budget may compensate it up to an annual ceiling of 15 million euro.⁶

  The mechanism deserves a careful reading rather than reflexive classification. A genuine, narrowly drawn obligation to maintain basic postal access to remote addresses, compensated at audited net cost, is not the same kind of line as a discretionary business-development pot — there is a real service obligation imposed by statute and a real, measurable excess cost. But the obligation itself is a policy choice, not a fixed fact: postal services are a competitive industry, the universal-service scope is set by statute and is amendable, and the trend across the activity is structural decline in letter volumes as communication moves to digital channels. The honest classification is a phase-out tied to a statutory review that narrows the universal-service obligation to a genuinely minimal access guarantee and reconsiders whether the residual cost is better addressed by allowing the provider to price and structure the service competitively. A five-year horizon allows the statutory review and the contractual universal-service agreement to be revisited at their next cycle rather than abrogated mid-term. Where a genuinely minimal access obligation survives the review, a small residual compensation may be defensible — but at audited net cost of a narrowly defined obligation, not the current envelope.

• Transition mechanism: Five-year phase-out aligned with the statutory review of the universal-service obligation and the renewal cycle of the universal postal service contract. The current contractual commitment is honoured to its term; the review narrows the obligation and the compensation for the next cycle.

• Affected groups: Magyar Posta as designated provider (the current contractual compensation is honoured to term); rural and remote postal users (a narrowly defined minimal-access guarantee is retained through the review); the general taxpayer who currently funds the compensation.

Űriparfejlesztési és űrtechnológiai feladatok — Egyéb kiadások

(Space-industry development and space-technology tasks — other expenditure)

• Current allocation: 100.0 millió Ft (capital)
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: A small capital line for space-industry and space-technology development. State-directed industrial development of a chosen frontier sector cannot be guided by any market price signal for which space-technology activities warrant capital; the direction of travel in the global space sector has been toward private-risk capital rather than state-directed subsidy. The line is very small and has no protected counterparties — an immediate cut on principle.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle.
• Affected groups: Recipients of the discretionary allocation — no protected reliance.

Revenue Items

The chapter records 163,198.4 millió Ft of total revenue against 1,161,281.4 millió Ft of expenditure — 161,878.5 millió Ft of operating revenue and 1,319.9 millió Ft of capital revenue, with no EU development revenue in 2026. The revenue is a mix of institutional own-revenue (the larger fiscal-machinery bodies generate operating receipts) and programme reflux; it is not, in the main, fees charged to the public for a discrete service.

• Széchenyi Kártya Programok — programbevétel: 93,028.0 millió Ft. The single largest revenue component, and the clearest case of scheme-internal reflux: loan repayments and guarantee fees recycling inside the credit- subsidy programme.

  • Type: Programme reflux.
  • Notes: Tapers in parallel with the Széchenyi Kártya phase-out. The expenditure-side schedule reflects the gross interest-subsidy envelope; this reflux declines as the loan book runs off.

• Institutional operating and capital revenue: the remaining 68,850.4 millió Ft is own-revenue of the chapter’s institutions — the Magyar Államkincstár (29,541.3 millió Ft), the Közbeszerzési és Ellátási Főigazgatóság (28,400.0 millió Ft), the Nemzeti Adó- és Vámhivatal (9,669.3 millió Ft), the Nemzeti Akkreditáló Hatóság (890.0 millió Ft, largely accreditation service fees), the NGM administration line (791.9 millió Ft), and the NKFH (20.1 millió Ft). The 857.8 millió Ft against the previously disbursed supports settlement line is reconciliation pass-through matching the same figure on the expenditure side.

  • Type: Institutional own-revenue / reconciliation pass-through.
  • Notes: The KEF and Államkincstár receipts are largely service recoveries on facility-management and treasury functions; they contract as the KEF aggregating role is devolved. The NAV and NAH receipts persist under the Keep classification.

The tourism-development line carries 52,001.8 millió Ft of capital expenditure (felhalmozási kiadás), not revenue — the figure does not appear among the chapter’s revenue rows. This chapter contains no major tax revenue items; the central government’s tax structure (SZJA, ÁFA, corporate tax, excise) sits in the revenue chapters, even though the tax authority that collects it (NAV) is funded here.

Chapter Summary

Classification	Count	Total (millió Ft)
Immediate Cut	7	12,149.3
Phase-Out	11	715,969.0
Nominal Freeze	2	4,233.4
Keep	7	428,929.7
Total	27	1,161,281.4

Revenue	Total (millió Ft)
Total chapter revenue	163,198.4

Year-1 net saving across all classifications: approximately 322,491 millió Ft (the immediate cuts in full, plus the first-year net saving on the eleven phase-out items after bridge and reliance costs — the front-loaded KEF severance-with-overlap glide, which protects only the 17.2 milliárd Ft payroll component while the 198.7 milliárd Ft balance falls in year 1, dominates this figure). Full steady-state saving once every phase-out completes: approximately 729,045 millió Ft — the immediate cuts (12,149.3 millió Ft), the eleven phase-out envelopes at their completed steady state (715,969.0 millió Ft), and the roughly 926 millió Ft of real erosion on the two nominal freezes over a decade.

Key Observations

• The chapter splits cleanly into legitimate fiscal machinery and a discretionary-allocation portfolio. The Keep block — NAV, the Magyar Államkincstár, the ministry’s own administration, the accreditation authority, international dues, and the technical reserve and reconciliation lines — is 428.9 milliárd Ft of genuine rule-of-law fiscal infrastructure. The phase-out block is 716.0 milliárd Ft, and almost all of it is one mechanism repeated: the state directing or pricing capital it has no market signal to allocate well.

• The credit-subsidy schemes are a price control on the cost of capital. The Széchenyi Kártya Programok (324.7 milliárd Ft), the agricultural variant (20.8 milliárd Ft), and the guarantee-fee subsidy (5.2 milliárd Ft) together fix an administratively set rate on SME credit. The fixed 3% rate does not reveal which borrowers and projects can bear the true cost of capital; it conceals it, and channels capital toward the firms that clear at the subsidised rate rather than those that clear at a price reflecting genuine scarcity and risk. The scheme’s scale is itself the evidence — the operator describes the subsidised rate as the primary reason firms borrow, which is the admission that the demand is for the subsidy.

• The minimum-wage SzocHo compensation line shows the state paying itself. The state mandates a wage increase, the increase raises the employer-side social contribution its own levy imposes, and the budget then partially rebates the contribution. The 12 milliárd Ft line is an admission that the SzocHo wedge is burdensome — applied selectively and temporarily rather than corrected at the rate. The honest fix is a structurally lower SzocHo rate, visible to every employer and worker, not a targeted rebate.

• Central procurement and the concession office are evidence, not solutions. KEF exists because the state buys at a scale that invites an aggregating layer; the Nemzeti Koncessziós Iroda exists because the state has converted gaming, motorways, and waste management into state-licensed monopolies that then need an apparatus to allocate. In both cases the body is part of the construction, and the honest classification is phase-out parallel to the underlying activity — less state purchasing, fewer state- constructed concession monopolies — rather than treating the supervisory body as the cure.

• The cost-bearer is structurally hidden across the programme block. The visible beneficiaries — borrowing SMEs, tourism developers, fashion firms, the Müpa’s audience — are organised, identifiable, and have professional dependence on the lines. The cost-bearer is every taxpayer, and the deeper unseen cost is the foregone alternative: the 107 milliárd Ft directed into state-selected tourism projects, the capital channelled into subsidised rather than market-priced lending, all of it bid away from whatever the same resources would have built on a market test. A wage-earner at the median wage, losing 55-60% of full employer labour cost to the cumulative tax wedge, funds a portfolio of allocations to recipients the state has chosen — and the universalist or developmental branding hides that the benefit concentrates while the cost spreads.

Sources

Footnotes

1. 424/2020. (IX. 4.) Korm. rendelet a Nemzeti Koncessziós Irodáról. Nemzeti Jogszabálytár / Hatályos Jogszabályok Gyűjteménye. 2020. https://net.jogtar.hu/jogszabaly?docid=a2000424.kor. The decree establishes the National Concession Office as a central budgetary body under the Minister of National Economy, operating since 9 September 2020, to run a unified procedural and supervisory system for the state’s concession activities, including bid procedures and concession contracts for casinos, motorways, and waste management. ↩

2. 45/2015. (XII. 30.) NGM rendelet a Nemzeti Akkreditáló Hatóság eljárásaiért fizetendő igazgatási szolgáltatási díjakról. Nemzeti Jogszabálytár / Hatályos Jogszabályok Gyűjteménye. 2015. https://net.jogtar.hu/jogszabaly?docid=a1500045.ngm. Establishes the administrative-service fees payable for accreditation, scope-extension, and supervisory procedures; the annual registration fee per accredited status is 100,000 Ft. ↩ ↩²

3. Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council setting out the requirements for accreditation and market surveillance. EUR-Lex, Official Journal of the European Union. 2008. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32008R0765. Article 4 requires each member state to appoint a single national accreditation body and provides that accreditation bodies shall not compete with one another. ↩

4. “4500 milliárd forint: így vált a Széchenyi-kártya a magyar gazdaság egyik tartópillérévé.” Index.hu, Gazdaság. 2026. https://index.hu/gazdasag/2026/02/20/kavosz-szechenyi-kartya-program-kis—es-kozepvallalkozas-kkv-kkv-szektor-tamogatott-hitel-ngm-vosz-vallalati-hitel. The Széchenyi Kártya Program, operated by KAVOSZ Zrt. and accessed through commercial banks, offers SME borrowers a uniformly fixed net 3% annual interest rate, with the central budget funding the interest subsidy; the operator identifies the favourable subsidised rate as the primary driver of loan demand. ↩ ↩²

5. “Müpa.” Wikipédia (Hungarian), citing Müpa Budapest Nonprofit Kft. public-interest data and the Állami Számvevőszék (State Audit Office) review of the operating arrangement. https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCpa. The Müpa generates approximately half of its total revenue from its own sources (ticket sales and corporate strategic partners), with the remainder from the state. ↩

6. 2012. évi CLIX. törvény a postai szolgáltatásokról (Postal Services Act). Nemzeti Jogszabálytár. 2012. https://njt.hu/jogszabaly/2012-159-00-00. Where the net cost of the universal postal service exceeds 1% of the universal-service provider’s universal-service-related costs, the excess constitutes the provider’s “unfair excess burden”, which the central budget may compensate up to an annual ceiling of 15 million euro.
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