Would Romania be more developed than Hungary? We show the facts
Most recently, a survey by Eurostat upset the mood, according to the findings of the EU statistical office, the average salary of full-time employees in Hungary is second to last, but that was not the problem, but that salaries in Romania are already higher than in our country. That’s why we looked at the state of the great Romanian-Hungarian economic competition at the end of 2022.
The Romanians dictated a serious pace in terms of growth, but it was hardly greater than the Hungarians
Between 2010 and 2011, the real GDP2 increased by 30.8, in the case of Romania the same figure was 322, so only one and a half percentage points is the advantage of our eastern neighbor in Hungary. We do not see Romania overtaking in terms of purchasing power parity either, and in 2021, in addition to the fact that our country has left Romania behind, It also overtook Portugal. At the same time, the pace of the country, which used to be one of the poorest members, cannot be denied. Since 2020, it has been considered more developed than Slovakia, and if it progresses like this, even if slowly, it can catch up with Portugal.
We beat Romania in terms of employment
If there is competition, Hungary would be the absolute winner in the entire EU field, the improvement of permanent employment. In 2010, our country still had the fourth worst indicator, and by 2021 it will already be the eighth. Romania, on the other hand, was able to show so many results that it moved from the last place to the third position, ahead of only Greece and Italy.
Hungarian wages are still the highest
As for wages, both were serious catch-ups, but in Romania it was undoubtedly more spectacular, because while they doubled in our country, gross earnings there almost tripled in just over ten years.
But what is more important is that Hungarian average wages are still higher, the average gross salary here was HUF 438,000 last year, while in Romania it was HUF 398,000 at the exchange rate of 72 lei.
The overall picture also includes the fact that earnings in our eastern neighbor increased in 2018 because part of the public burden was charged to the gross wage as it is.
You don’t have to be afraid to grow out of debt
There is an important indicator that everyone seems to forget about Romania, and this is the public debt, which did not decrease even during the economic period of the 2010s, compared to Hungary, which cut its debt by a total of 15 percentage points until the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. The Romanian debt index is especially worth watching for 2008, when the Hungarian state debt was even higher, and last year the difference was “only” 30 percentage points.