Balog: Hungary tops Europe in family support funds

Budapest, December 5 (MTI) – Hungary devotes 4.7 percent of its gross domestic product to family support schemes and thereby tops the list in Europe, the minister of human resources told a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday.

Various family benefits over the past six years have added up to 1.1 million forints (EUR 3,500) per family on average, Zoltan Balog told the welfare committee.

The government has kept to a promise made in 2010 that improvements would be made to the country’s social conditions based on the possibilities allowed by the extent of economic growth. “We cannot offer a good solution by taking up loans because that leads to the country’s indebtedness,” he said.

Balog said that several hundreds of billions of forints had been spent on various infrastructure developments in the sphere of social and health care, and this has been coupled with wage hikes in the public sector.

Job subsidies have doubled from 24 percent of a wage in 2010 to what will be 52 percent next year, he said.