Position: Hungarian Economy Minister
Incumbent: Gyorgy Matolcsy, born July 18, 1955
Term: Assumed office on May 29, 2010, for four years
Key facts:
-- Matolcsy is one of the authors of both the 1998 and 2010 election winning economic programmes of the governing centre-right Fidesz party, which has ruled with an unprecedented two-thirds majority since May 2010. He is a key theorist behind the Hungarian government's recent economic path, which emphasises growth and eschews austerity in the effort to recover from the deepest recession since the fall of Communism.
-- Matolcsy has steered Hungary on an economic path that eschews austerity cuts and aims to create room in the budget for 2011 income tax cuts and meet the EU 2.94 percent/GDP budget deficit target. The government aims to meet this target with the help of a windfall tax on the financial, energy, telecom and retail sectors, as well as an effective re-nationalisation of the country's mandatory private pension funds.
-- The economy minister, who oversees budget planning and a host of other financial areas, enjoys the full support of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has called him "his right hand".
-- Matolcsy's career spans the communist-era Finance Ministry, a range of research institutions, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where he was deputy director, then director, in the early 1990s. Although he was a member of the first Fidesz government, he did not join the party until 2003. (Writing by Marton Dunai; Editing by Jon Hemming)