A party leader of opposition LMP urged the launch of a new business Start programme to benefit small enterprises and young entrepreneurs on Saturday, International Youth Day.
Örs Tetlák, who sits on LMP’s board, said national employment nonprofit OFA’s Business Start II programme was “drowned in scandal” when the registration site crashed because of strong interest on August 1. He noted that the programme had offered businesses 4.5 million forints (EUR 11,700) from a 6 billion forint allocation.
Tetlák said businesses should be allowed to apply for 9 million forints, while the amount earmarked for the programme should be raised to 120 billion forints. The modifications could create 13,000 jobs, he added.
Tetlák said just as many jobs could be created with one-tenth of the tax revenue the government spends on battery plants, pointing to 1,200 billion forints in subsidies for foreign-owned battery manufacturers the government has awarded so far. A “healthy and well-functioning” economy should be built on local small businesses, not multinationals that repatriate their profits while paying “laughably low” taxes, he added.
LMP urges railway upgrades instead of line closures
Opposition LMP advocates railway upgrades and renovation instead of shutting down lines, party MP Bernadett Bakos said at a press conference on Sunday. Bakos said the government had shut down ten spur lines from August and was weighing the closure of a further seven, while replacing passenger rail service with buses that were “much less comfortable and use far more energy”.
She suggested a shortage of rolling stock could be remedied, for a ten-year transitional period, with the purchase of used diesels for 20 billion forints (EUR 52m). Bakos pointed to “hundreds of billions of forints” of support for battery factories even though electric vehicles “won’t solve transportation problems” and said the government was sending a message to youth to drive, rather than take the train, by subsidising drivers education.
Government policies have “forced” people to rely on cars, raising the number of vehicles on Hungarian roads by a million over ten years, putting a big burden on the environment, she said. Everywhere else in Europe, spur lines are being renovated, as railways are the “foundation of green transportation policy”, she added.