From the 2026 budget audit
10 billion forints a year to manage property the state need not own
MNV Zrt. — 300 to 499 employees — exists solely because the state insists on being a major landlord. Shrink the portfolio and the management apparatus shrinks with it.
Roughly 2,400 Ft per taxpayer per year — 10 billion Ft to fund the administrative overhead of the state's property-ownership decision.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: an asset-management organisation that keeps the portfolio running. The unseen: the cost every wage-earner pays to maintain an apparatus that exists because the state chose to hold property that private owners could manage without a subsidy.
Objection
"Someone has to manage state property — you can't just stop paying for the management."
Answer
Correct — and the reform does not abolish management while keeping the assets. It shrinks both together: a divestment programme sells the non-strategic portfolio, and a smaller residual of genuinely strategic holdings needs a correspondingly smaller body, funded from the portfolio's own returns rather than from general taxation. The 4-year phase-out is sized to that parallel divestment track.
Share if you think the cost of managing state property should fall as the state owns less of it.
The analyst's verdict
Support for the operation of MNV Zrt.
Rationale
This is the operating subsidy for MNV Zrt. itself — the apparatus that manages the "entrusted" property portfolio. MNV is a company with 300-499 employees.[^3] Its existence is a function of the size of the state's property holdings: the larger the portfolio the state insists on owning, the larger the administrative body needed to manage it. This inverts the usual framing. MNV is not a service the taxpayer buys; it is the overhead cost of the state choosing to be a major landlord and asset-holder rather than divesting. The classical-liberal reform is not to abolish asset management while keeping the assets — someone must hold the keys — but to shrink both together: a divestment programme that sells the non-strategic portfolio reduces the management burden proportionally, and a smaller residual portfolio of genuinely strategic holdings can be managed by a correspondingly smaller body. The 10,000.0 millió Ft operating subsidy should fall on the same schedule as the portfolio shrinks, because the apparatus is sized to the portfolio. It is classified Phase-Out rather than Keep because the management mandate at its current scale exists only to administer a portfolio that the reform programme reduces; the apparatus is not a permanent rights-protection function.
Transition mechanism
A 4-year phase-out, severance-with-overlap. MNV's costs are predominantly payroll for an administrative workforce of 300-499 employees[^3] with general, transferable office and asset-management skills — exactly the case the severance-with-overlap mechanism fits. The payroll component of the 10,000.0 millió Ft operating subsidy is estimated at 6,000.0 millió Ft (60% — a standard share for an administrative body whose output is professional services, consistent with the operating-cost structure typical of asset-management companies).[^4] Under a 24-month severance-with-overlap, the payroll component is honoured for years 1-2 while the workforce transitions; non-payroll operating costs of 4,000.0 millió Ft are released immediately. Years 1-2 net saving: 4,000.0 millió Ft. Year 3 onward, once severance ends and a residual strategic-portfolio management function is funded from portfolio dividends rather than budget subsidy: full 10,000.0 millió Ft. The 4-year horizon allows the divestment programme that shrinks the portfolio to run in parallel.
Affected groups
MNV's 300-499 employees. Under severance-with-overlap they retain full state salary for 24 months and may take private-sector employment in that window while keeping both incomes; their skills — property management, corporate administration, real-estate transactions — transfer directly to a large private real-estate and corporate-services market. A residual strategic-asset-management function retains a fraction of the staff.
Sources
- Nemzeti Cégtár — MNV Zrt. · Nemzeti Cégtár (2025)
Free Society Institute
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