Directory of Hungarian Exporters/Suppliers 1992 [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION 1991 and 1992 have been the years of crucial changes in the Hungarian economy. On replacing the single party system with parliamentary democracy, the remodelling of the economy began. New government agencies and laws have been created to aid the ambitious scheme, unparalleled in modern history. Command economy, in which public property dominated , has to be turned into free-market economy, one in which private enterprise thrives. Through this untested and painstaking privatisation process large, state-run companies are broken up and new ventures emerge. Small private firms, mainly in trade and services, are formed by the thousand. What used to be a lucid economy with simple rules has become a complex pattern. In foreign trade changes are even more prevalent: the number of new firms is soaring and they are of quite a different nature from the foreign trade organizations of the past. A legion of small and medium size companies pursued export/import before the second world war. During the 1950s foreign trade, just like other sectors of the economy, were centralized. Large, state-owned export/import houses were formed with precisely defined profiles and plan targets operating under the tight control of the single party and its obedient government. Not only the late 1960s were the biggest manufacturing companies given some powers to trade abroad on their own. Later on more and more companies followed suit. By the late 1980s Hungary's annual foreign trade has become worth between 13 and 15 billion dollars and yet there were only fewer than 500 companies that transacted foreign trade. In 1991 all administrative restrictions were abolished, -thus any registered company may do foreign trade. It is not even compulsory to obtain a license for the export/import activity. In 1992, the number of firms engaged (also) in foreign trade is estimated at over 50,000. The administrative infrastructure, including the courts of registration, the customs and the statistical offices are unable to handle today's accelerated developments. They were, after all, created to cope with a mere 4,000 to 5,000 firms. Small wonder, data are often processed with a delay of months. It requires both money and time to computerize registration and other administrative procedures. Undaunted by poor telecommunications, scarcity of reliable data sources and the myriad of daily changes, we have embarked on compiling a business