HUNGARY FACTS

HUNGARY FACTS

Summary:

1) Introduction.
2) Map and Flag.
3) Borders.
4) Counties.
5) Main cities.
6) Relief.
7) Climate.
8) Economy.

1) INTRODUCTION:

Hungary is a country of Central Europe, member of the European Union. In Hungarian the country is called Magyarország.

Capital: Budapest.
Population (2018): 9,817 million inhabitants.
Gross Domestic Product - GDP (2016): 125.817 billion dollars.
Official language: Hungarian.
Area: 93,030 km^2.
Currency: Forint.

2) MAP AND FLAG:

HUNGARY MAP

BUDAPEST,HUNGARY

HUNGARY FLAG

3) BORDERS:

Hungary is bordered on the north by Slovakia, on the north-east by Ukraine, on the east by Romania, on the south by Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, and on the west by Austria.

4) COUNTIES:

At the administrative level, the country is divided into 19 counties (named counties): Bács-Kiskun, Baranya, Békés, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Csongrád, Fejér, Győr-Moson-Sopron, Hajdú-Bihar, Heves, Jász-Nagykun -Szolnok, Komárom-Esztergom, Nógrád, Pest, Somogy, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Tolna, Vas, Veszprém, Zala.

5) MAIN CITIES:

The largest city and cultural capital is budapest. The other big cities are Debrecen, a commercial center of a large agricultural region in the east of the country; Miskolc, headquarters of metallurgical industries in the northeast; Szeged, center of agricultural products distribution of the Hungarian Great Plain but also high place of the chemical industries and synthetic textiles in the south-east; Pécs, center of light industries in the south of the country.

6) RELIEF:

The landscape is actually more complex than one imagines: the plains are often associated with mountainous areas which remain always low, but are not less rugged and picturesque. The highest peak is 1,015 meters to the north, in the Matra Mountains, while the Bakony Mountains, north-west of Lake Balaton, and the Pilis Mountains, which dominate the angle of the Danube River to the north. The territory consists of two distinct topographic units: a western and northern Hungary associating mountains, hills and basins, and an eastern Hungary which remains the exclusive domain of the plain. The course of the Danube corresponds, in the north, on a hundred and fifty kilometers, between Bratislava and Ezstergom, to a part of the border with Slovakia. It then bends towards the south and flows a little more than two hundred kilometers before reaching Serbia. It is during this meridian route that the Great River separates Hungary from the mountains, hills and ponds that are found to the west, from the Great Plain of Alföld which extends to is. The flow of the Danube varies greatly with the seasons, and prior to the development work carried out in the nineteenth century, spring floods flooded two million hectares each year. Central European country, Hungary has a moderate continental climate, intermediate between that of the Italian plain of the Po and that of the Vlach plain crossed by the lower Danube in Bulgaria and Romania, between the Transylvanian Alps to the north and the Balkan Stara Planina to the south. The thermal amplitude is high (-3 ° in January and + 19 ° in July in the north of the country) and the precipitations are mainly stormy and summer, as usual characteristics of continental continental climates. The drought requires the use of irrigation in the east of the country, in the region of Debrecen.

7) CLIMATE:

Hungary has a relatively dry continental climate due to lack of maritime influence, with cold winters and hot summers. Average temperatures are - 1 ° C in January and 21 ° C in July. Rainfall is highest in early summer and average rainfall varies from 787 mm in the western part of the country to 508 mm in the more sheltered eastern part.
The main rivers are the Danube and Tisza. Hungary has some 1200 natural and man-made lakes, including Lake Balaton, which is the largest lake in Europe (595 km2). It is called "the Hungarian Inland Sea".
Hungary is also a country very rich in thermal waters. These natural and medicinal waters contain, due to past volcanic activities, very numerous mineral substances. The climate is temperate, the country is at the crossroads of three climatic zones: Mediterranean, continental and Atlantic.

8) ECONOMY:

Economically, Hungary has often been considered a "good student" of the European Union. It had the opportunity to open up to the market economy as early as 1968, when it obtained from the Soviet Union to partially break with the directed economy.
Before the economic crisis, Hungary was the third largest economy in Central Europe after Poland and the Czech Republic. It was also the most open economy, with a significant number of sectors linked to Western Europe by trade and investment.
During the 1990s, Hungary pursued an active privatization policy. Foreign direct investment, which accounted for one third of GDP in 2002, played an important role in the country's economic growth. In 2007, net FDI inflows actually accounted for 50.7% of GDP (for a European average of 9.5%), but they slowed considerably after the crisis.
In a slight decline after the collapse of communism, the Hungarian industry subsequently recovered, when the country became an essential link in the European production chain thanks to the low cost of its labor force. Indeed, the average hourly cost now stands at € 10, compared with a European average of € 25. But it is the services that represent the most dynamic sector of activity, with two-thirds of GDP and an equivalent share of jobs. As for agriculture, it represents barely 5% of the total wealth, although a third of the population continues to live in the countryside.
Hungary was particularly affected by the economic and financial crisis, as it was already facing an increase in its fiscal deficits delaying its entry into the euro area, initially planned for 2010. In 2008, the country benefited from a € 20 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union and the World Bank. He seeks further assistance in 2011, but following a dispute with the EU on the independence of the Hungarian central bank, Viktor Orban decided to do without the EU and the IMF to finance the markets.
The government adopted a series of measures to reduce the deficit and the public debt, which led to the end of the excessive deficit procedure in June 2013. In 2012, the public deficit has effectively gone back below 3%. On the other hand, public debt is around 75% of GDP in 2018. The unemployment rate (in the sense of the ILO) has been falling since 2012 and reaches 3.4% in 2019, but the situation of the population is deteriorating. likewise since the crisis: public social spending has decreased by 3 percentage points of GDP since 2009 and the share of the poor population according to the national poverty line has increased to 14.9% in 2014, an increase of 2.5 points since 2009.

Official Website : https://hellohungary.com/en

Illustration Credits : Muhammad Sharjeel