On October 11, Eurostat published revised GDP per capita statistics, which confirm our main conclusion based on preliminary data already written in March: Romania overtook our country based on the economic development index (during revisions, overtaking at the beginning of spring) was corrected again. By Eurostat, new data confirmed Romania’s lead once again). This is related to the fact that although Hungary has also managed to steadily catch up with the EU average development over the past nine years (+8.5 percentage points since 2013), at the same time, the Romanian economy has shown a much faster convergence with European Union. Average: in 2013, 54, it was 6%, and by 2022, according to the revised data, it will be close to 77%, that is, it has managed to achieve an improvement of 22.1 percentage points, i.e. 2.5 times the galactic pace.
In the last year, i.e. in 2022, the Romanian catch-up was more dynamic compared to 2021: the Romanian economy lost 2.9 percentage points, while the Hungarian economy lost 1.8 percentage points compared to the EU average.
It is also worth examining the data in a long-term context: since 2013, i.e. in 10 years, the Hungarian economy has managed to show the 11th fastest convergence with the EU average, but before that there are usually only regional competing economies, i.e. .
While the Hungarian economy approaches the EU average in terms of development, its relative performance is deteriorating compared to countries in the region.
The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia are the three countries in the region (which consists of 12 countries in the broad sense) where a lower degree of convergence has been achieved since 2013 than in Hungary.
As a result, in terms of per capita GDP (calculated on a purchasing power parity basis). Hungary rejects only 5 countries: Latvia, Croatia, Slovakia, Greece and Bulgaria. (Based on the latest data, it is also new that Portugal, which has almost reached its level of development based on preliminary data, appears more distant from the eyes of Hungarians.) If we want to project the trends of the past period into the near future, then Depending on the pace of catch-up, the Hungarian economy may also begin to worry about potentially overtaking Latvia and Croatia. Hungary’s development advantage over that of the other two countries is now only 3 percentage points.
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