Bank of China, one of the biggest Chinese commercial banks will open its regional centre for Central and Eastern Europe this year in Budapest, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó informed MTI in Beijing following his negotiations on Monday.
“Today’s agreement means that the ninth most powerful bank of the world, which gained a foothold in our region - more exactly in Hungary - in 1997, will coordinate its regional operations from Hungary. This is a significant recognition of the Hungarian financial investment environment”, the minister said.
Bank of China Chairman Tian Guoli also emphasized during his talks with the minister that the bank wants to increase the
importance of the national currency, promoting the use of the Chinese yuan in international trade. Today the yuan is the second-most used currency in global trade finance, the chairman confirmed.Péter Szijjártó also emphasised that BoC has been regularly cooperating with Hungarian Eximbank, and so far has supported the investments of Wanhua Borsodchem with a joint loan of EUR 70 million. Their latest project is the disbursement of a loan of EUR 40 million with contribution from Eximbank and the BoC to promote exports. The minister said that BoC and Eximbank are cooperating in financing other investments in Hungary as well, and also mentioned a recent project of Huawei.
Péter Szijjártó also paid a visit to the National Committee for Development and Reform and had discussions with the leaders of the committee about the modernisation of the Budapest – Belgrád railway line. He reminded that “we have recently signed the protocol at the meeting of the trilateral Chinese-Serbian-Hungarian working group, according to which the Chinese government is currently working on the first so called ‘feasibility study on cooperation’ that contains the conditions of implementation and financing”.
It was also agreed, the minister said, that a new agreement would be prepared for the Belgrade summit meeting between China and the 16 Central and Eastern European countries, which would take the preparation of the railway project to the next phase, as a Hungarian-Chinese-Serbian intergovernmental agreement.
Answering a question whether Hungary attaches any condition to the implementation of the railway project, the minister said that “we have a signed agreement that we take part in the construction of a new double-track railway for trains travelling at up to 160 km/h. Our standpoint is that we need a credit line on more favourable conditions than those available on the market. This is a very important precondition of the cooperation”, he added.
