Ministry official: EC forecast for Hungary GDP 'finally based on facts'

The European Commission's latest forecast for Hungary's economic growth is "finally based on facts", an official of the finance ministry said on public television. Deputy state secretary Laszlo Balogh said the EC's quarterly economic forecast for Hungary was prepared professionally and with "real numbers". The EC's experts could not ignore the fact that Hungary's economic growth did not slow in the first quarter, instead growing at the fastest clip in the European Union, he said. Hungary's GDP growth reached 5.3 percent year on year in the first quarter of the year. In its forecast released earlier on Wednesday, the EC raised its projection for Hungary's GDP growth this year to 4.4 percent from 3.7 percent. The growth projection is above the government's target of 4 percent.