From the 2026 budget audit
Farm credit at a state-fixed 3% — the same price control, different sector
A 20.8 milliárd Ft agricultural variant of the Széchenyi Kártya subsidy: the same administratively set interest rate, the same capital-misallocation mechanism, directed at farming and agribusiness borrowers.
Roughly 5,200 Ft per taxpayer per year — 20,820 millió Ft total, channelling subsidised credit toward the agricultural sector at a rate no bank could sustain without the budget transfer.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: farmers and agribusinesses borrowing at 3% rather than the market rate, with the budget covering the difference. The unseen: the rural taxpayer — many of them agricultural workers or smallholders — whose SZJA and SzocHo fund a subsidy that flows disproportionately to the larger farm businesses with the credit volume to draw it down.
Objection
"But farming is strategic — food security requires supporting agricultural investment, even at below-market cost."
Answer
Food security is a real consideration; subsidised credit is the wrong instrument for it. A below-market interest rate does not reveal which agricultural investments are genuinely productive; it channels capital toward whatever clears the subsidised threshold. Where agriculture faces a genuine structural problem — land fragmentation, export access, insurance — those problems require targeted structural reform, not a price control on credit that builds in dependence on the continuation of the subsidy.
Share if you think farm support should address real structural problems, not subsidise the price of loans.
The analyst's verdict
Agricultural Széchenyi Card schemes
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.
Free Society Institute
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