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A wine shop named Vinorium specialising in Eastern European wine has opened in Váci utca. We spoke to its founder and owner László Puskás, who grew up in Austria, about the concept for the shop and the Hungarian wine market.

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German, US and Korean firms heading for Hungary: HITA;  Agency charged with attracting foreign investors sums up first nine months of operation

On Wednesday the government released details on the creation of the National Asset Management Company (NET), the new organisation tasked with ensuring that defaulting forex borrowers do not lose the roofs over their heads. NET will purchase the properties and allow their previous owners to remain as tenants. “If their financial situation improves, they can repurchase the property from the state,” government spokesman András Giró-Szász said at the press conference, which followed a cabinet meeting.

Banks and other loan providers could be on the verge of entering a bidding war for the custom of borrowers who want to take out forint loans to pay off foreign-currency mortgages in a lump sum under a new government scheme.

Interest rates could skyrocket and the value of the forint plunge – head of Hungary’s biggest bank warns government in wake of forex-loan clearance law

As expected the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) has kept its base rate unchanged at 6%, and although there was a proposal for a 25bp increase, the bank’s comment did not sound really hawkish.

The crisis in the eurozone means that Hungary must introduce further measures to handle its exposure to risk, which is one of the highest among the countries of the region, Minister of National Economy György Matolcsy told a committee meeting in Parliament on Monday. He blamed previous administrations and the National Bank for the foreign-exchange loan debt situation.

The controversial plan to allow forex mortgage payers to clear their debts at a discount was only one part of a six-point “National Protection Plan” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán outlined during a speech on Monday to open Parliament’s autumn session.

At the end of last week the leader of the parliamentary faction of the ruling Fidesz party, János Lázár, announced a proposal that would make it possible for households to dispose of their troubled foreign currency-denominated mortgage debt by making a final payment at below-market exchange rates.

Russian state-controlled banking giant Sberbank announced on Thursday its acquisition of 100 per cent of Volksbank International AG (VBI) in a transaction that marks Sberbank’s first acquisition outside of countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wants to ratchet up the government’s drive to reduce the national debt from almost 80 to 70 % of GDP by the end of 2012, and as low as 60% by the end of the current parliamentary cycle in 2014. “It is now clear that Europe and the European economy is in great trouble and faces a long crisis lasting eight to 10 years,” Orbán said, reiterating comments made on Monday.

Recent data indicates that confidence in regional manufacturing industries is tending to deteriorate. So-called purchasing manager indexes (PMIs) in August mostly reflected declining new orders and slowing production growth across Central and Eastern Europe.