From the 2026 budget audit
5.5 billion Ft to run the office that hands out the investment subsidies.
This is the administrative apparatus of the grant fund — it has no rationale once the fund closes, and it phases out three years ahead of the last grant payment.
Roughly 1,370 Ft per taxpayer per year — 5,487 million Ft to administer a programme that is already closing to new applications.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the civil servants who process and monitor the grant agreements. The unseen: every taxpayer funding an administrative machine whose sole job is to distribute a fund that will not be replenished.
Objection
"If you're honouring the existing grants anyway, you need staff to manage them."
Answer
A closing fund needs progressively less administration than an open one. The three-year linear reduction tracks the declining workload as no new applications are accepted. By year three the grants are running off and the office is no longer needed.
Share if you think the cost of running a grant fund should end when the fund does.
The analyst's verdict
Investment Promotion Appropriation — Operating Costs
Rationale
This is the operating budget of the apparatus that administers the investment-subsidy programme analysed above — the staff and overhead of running the grant fund. It has no rationale independent of the fund it administers. As the General Investment Promotion Subsidy winds down over four years, the administrative apparatus winds down with it; a three-year horizon brings the operating cost to zero slightly ahead of the grant run-off, since the closed-to-new-applications fund needs less administration than an open one.
Transition mechanism
Linear three-year reduction tracking the declining administrative workload as the subsidy programme closes to new awards.
Affected groups
Investment-promotion administrative staff, with general labour-market skills and a three-year transition window.
Free Society Institute
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