Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced on Sunday new tax and family loan’s benefits, as part of the government’s efforts to increase birth rates, while maintaining a tight immigration policy, according to and Reuters quoted by News.ro.

Orban, one of the most vocal critics of immigration, said he wants to keep economic growth 2 % points above the European average in the next few years, despite the slowdown in the global economy.

The Government also did not provide an estimation of the costs of the new measures.

Orban’s Chief of Staff, Gergely Gulyas, said on Friday that the new spending would be funded from general reserves or additional revenues from the 2019 budget.

Fidesz ruling party will participate in the European Parliament elections and in local elections in Hungary this year, following a series of protests that have taken place over the last few months against Prime Minister Orban’s government, although the party is still leading the polls of opinion.

Demonstrations have been triggered by the passage of laws in December that allow employers to require employees to work up to 400 extra hours a year and to set up new administrative courts to manage sensitive issues that will be subordinated to the government.

While Orban held a speech on the state of the nation on Sunday, several hundred protesters gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in Buda Castle, while about 100 protesters blocked a bridge over the Danube nearby.

“Less and less children are born in Europe. For the West, the answer is immigration. For each missing child one should be born and then the figures would be good. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children, “Orban said, announcing the stimulus program.

The new measures include expanding a loan program for families with at least two children to help them buy housing, subsidizing car purchases and exempting income tax for women with at least four children.

Women younger than 40 years old who will get married for the first time will be entitled to a subsidized loan of 10 million forints ($ 36,000). One-third of the debt will be cleared at the birth of the second child and the entire loan after the third child.

The budget for 2019 provides for a budget deficit of 1.8% of GDP. In January, Hungary recorded a surplus of 244.5 billion forints, the highest of the past two decades.

Zoltan Torok, an analyst at the Hungarian division of Raiffeisen Bank, said that at first glance the measures could cost tens of billions of forints, but would not produce a significant increase in the budget deficit.

In spite of street protests, the Fidesz party remains ahead of opposition parties, according to the latest opinion polls.

In January, the Nezopont probing institute estimated Fidesz’s support to 39 percent of all voters, close to the estimated 28 percent of Median.

Source: Digi24 (TFP translation)