Pharmaceutical Industry’s Performance Doubles in a Decade
Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has announced that Novartis will establish a new research and development center in Budapest. The center will coordinate research projects in Southern Europe and Africa and increase the number of R&D staff by 25%. Szijjártó highlighted the Hungarian government’s ongoing efforts to ensure the international competitiveness of the country’s pharmaceutical industry and create a necessary competitive and innovation-stimulating environment. The minister also noted that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the backbones of the economy in Hungary, as demonstrated by the 23 major pharmaceutical investments in the country since 2014. The sector’s production value reached HUF 1,200bn (€3.22bn) last year, which is a huge record and practically doubled the sector’s output in ten years. Furthermore, during this period, the number of people working in the pharmaceutical sector has increased by 1.5 times and now exceeds 30,000. 87% of products manufactured in Hungary are exported to 126 countries worldwide. Novartis employs over 400 people in Hungary, with 65 clinical trials running in the past ten years, and tens of thousands of Hungarian patients participating in such programs.
