Statement
by
H.E. Mr. György Gilyan, State Secretary of the Ministry of Economy and Transport of the Republic of Hungary

11^th Session of the General Conference of UNIDO
(1 December 2005, Vienna)
(check against delivery)

May I, at the outset, extend our sincere congratulations to you on your election as President of this highly important Conference. You may rest assured of our full support. We fully associate ourselves with the statement of the United Kingdom made on behalf of the EU. Please, allow me to shortly summarize the latest developments in Hungary’s fruitful cooperation with UNIDO.

The Hungarian government welcomes UNIDO’s involvement in tackling global challenges to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We agree that it is our shared responsibility to ensure sustainable industrial development. Because of our special capability in the framework of our donor activity we attach special importance to the transfer of technology and we are ready to increase our regional activity in all technical fields where our technological experience can be useful in the regions of Central and Eastern Europe and NIS. Hungary is of the opinion that according its service modules UNIDO can effectively provide useful assistance to the development of these regions and the least developed countries.

In order to highlight the above statement in some details, please let me inform you on some experience of our co-operation with the UNIDO.

As we already reported during the earlier sessions of the UNIDO General Conference , since 2000 Hungary in close cooperation with UNIDO has become the motor in Regional Initiative on the Technology Foresight for Central and Eastern Europe and NIS . Based on the experience of several international conferences, training programmes in different places in the regions for participants from the regions, foresight studies, the first Foresight Summit in Budapest in 2003, now the preparatory phase of launching a regional virtual center is under implementation. The regional virtual center aims to act as a facilitator to the implementation of the Regional Initiative on Technology Foresight for Central and Eastern Europe and NIS. The virtual centre will be hosted by a selected institution and will be organized as a network of institutions and persons, including officials and managers responsible for technology development in Central and Eastern Europe and NIS using intensive modern information and telecommunications technology. The network will particularly target strong involvement of the business sector. This virtual centre, mobilizing the above mentioned network, will be a fundamental operational basis of the UNIDO Regional Initiative on Technology Foresight for the Central and Eastern Europe and NIS, as a major exercise dedicated to consolidate concrete contributions of foresight to the creation of new visions and policy making process addressing regional and national issues, awareness building and developing foresight culture in the region.

Another example of the regional co-operation between Hungary and UNIDO is the co-operation on the Cleaner Production.

The Hungarian Cleaner Production Centre (HCPC) is a member of the UNIDO international network, which has been established by UNIDO after the Rio-convention. The aim of HCPC is the introduction of technologies, production processes, new methods and methodologies which emphasise preventive measures beside economic and environment benefits. These processes achieve the reduction of environmental load by methods that mostly refer to increased productivity and economic benefit at the companies.

The Hungarian Cleaner Production Centre is a national focal point for the promotion of Cleaner Production activities in Hungary. It serves as a central co-ordinating and catalytic clearing house to contribute to sustainable industrial development in Hungary and to improve the environmental performance and competitive advantage of industry by means of Cleaner Production. In it present form the Hungarian Cleaner Production Centre works on a non-profit basis, assisting companies, consulting firms and policy makers to understand the concept of cleaner production and to put it into practice.

HCPC continuously gives support to other Cleaner Production Centres and other organisations in the region which aim to establish a formal National Cleaner Production Centre. The most successful co-operations were training and consulting programmes with Croatia and Ukraine in the last few years. HCPC plans to widen these programmes to other nations within the Central and Eastern European and NIS regions.

Hungary also fully supports UNIDO’s efforts to address issues with global impact. The UNIDO Seminar on Industry Participation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for Greenhouse Gases was found by us as an important issue. This seminar linking the Kyoto project based mechanism with the EU ETS was held here in Vienna in September 2005 with the support of Hungary and the UK. The participants could get information about the changes in the directive under discussion as well as about the planned procedure of reviewing the new National Allocation Plans. The monitoring, reporting, verification and accounting issues at installation and company level were introduced. The prospects for linking non-EU Domestic Emissions Trading Schemes with the EU ETS were also discussed.

As an example of the co-operation between Hungary and UNIDO in assisting in the development of the least developed countries I should like to inform you that my country supported a project in Malawi which aimed at developing the Support Services in the country. On the basis of the Malawi experience these services were developed by UNIDO in Nigeria, too, and the networking activities were commenced by national standards institutes of Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and the Network of Users of Scientific Equipment in Eastern and Southern Africa with the aim of developing these services in Africa.

By concluding my statement, let me reiterate that Hungary is fully committed to the cooperation with UNIDO and we look forward to working together with the new Director General, H.E. Kandeh Yumkella to whom we would like to offer our full support.

Thank you, Mr. President