ADDRESS BY THE AMBASSADOR OF INDIA TO HUNGARY

Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry

1 July 2026

Budapest, 2026

1. Opening & The Bond Between Our Two Nations

[Slide 1 — Gateway to a Billion Opportunities]

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Members of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen —

It is a privilege of the deepest order to stand before you today in this magnificent hall — a hall that represents the enterprise, ingenuity, and ambition of the Hungarian people. I bring with me warm greetings from the people and the Government of India, and a message of partnership that I believe holds the promise of transforming our bilateral relationship into something truly historic.

India and Hungary are not strangers. We are, in the truest sense, old friends — friends bound not merely by diplomatic protocol, but by a shared civilisational commitment to democracy, to rule of law, to the dignity of the individual, and to the belief that commerce and culture are the twin engines of lasting peace. Our two nations were among the earliest to establish diplomatic ties after India's independence, and in the decades since, that relationship has been sustained by mutual respect, genuine affection, and a growing recognition of each other's potential.

We are both proud democracies. We both believe in the transformative power of free enterprise. And we both carry within us the weight and the wonder of ancient civilisations that continue to shape the modern world. These are not mere rhetorical flourishes — they are the bedrock upon which every commercial agreement, every scientific collaboration, and every cultural exchange between our peoples is ultimately built.

I am particularly pleased to be here at this moment in Hungary's political life. Hungary has elected a new government — one that carries with it a renewed energy, a fresh mandate, and, we believe, a bold vision for Hungary's place in the world. India welcomes this new chapter with open arms. We look forward to working with Prime Minister Magyar's government to give our bilateral relationship the ambition and the momentum it deserves — to take India–Hungary relations to new heights, across every dimension: trade, investment, technology, education, culture, and beyond. The foundation is strong. The moment is right. And the will, I can assure you, is there on India's side.

1. Hungary, the European Union, and the India–EU FTA

Hungary's role in the European Union has never been more consequential. As Hungary assumes its rightful and valuable place within the EU's evolving architecture, India takes note — and takes encouragement. Because it is precisely through the frame of India's Strategic Partnership with the European Union, and the transformative agreement that partnership has now produced, that our bilateral engagement with Hungary can reach its fullest potential.

The India–EU Free Trade Agreement — a landmark accord decades in the making — is not simply a tariff schedule. It is a declaration of strategic intent between two of the world's largest democratic economies. And Hungary — positioned at the heart of Central Europe, deeply integrated into EU supply chains, and home to world-class industries in pharmaceuticals, engineering, and technology — is uniquely placed to leverage this agreement for its own prosperity. India intends to be a partner in that journey. We look forward to maximising our bilateral engagements through the lens of this historic accord — for the mutual prosperity of both our peoples.

III. India's Transformation — The Scale of What Is Happening

[Slides 3–4 — India's Transformation: Reforms, Scale & the New Industrial Superpower]

Let me now speak to you directly as businesspeople — as men and women who understand that sentiment follows data, and that the most powerful investment case is one built on verifiable fact.

India today is not the India of textbooks or outdated assumptions. India today is the world's fifth-largest economy, with a GDP of 3.9 trillion US dollars — and it is growing faster than any comparable economy on earth. Our GDP has expanded at over seven percent per annum, year after year, even as the global economy has sputtered and stalled at one to two percent. We are projected to become the world's third-largest economy by 2027 — moving from fourth to third in the shortest span any nation has achieved. And this is not the result of commodity windfalls or temporary stimulus — it is the result of structural reform, political vision, and institutional transformation.

Prime Minister Modi's government has set before the Indian people a civilisational ambition: Viksit Bharat — a Developed India — by 2047, the centenary of our independence. This is not a slogan. It is a roadmap — one that is already reshaping every sector of our economy.

[Slide 5 — Geopolitical Stability: The Neutral Safe Haven]

And at a moment when the world is navigating what many analysts are calling a second Cold War — when supply chains are being weaponised and geopolitical risk has returned with force to boardrooms around the world — India stands apart. India is the reliable, democratic, non-aligned partner. We require no de-risking. Our macro-economic stability is robust, our institutions are credible, and our democratic credentials are unimpeachable. When the world looks for a partner it can trust — for the long term, at scale — it looks to India.

[Slide 6 — India by the Numbers]

The numbers speak with authority. A population of 1.44 billion — the largest on earth. Five hundred million middle-class consumers by 2030. Sixty-five percent of our population under the age of thirty-five — the most consequential demographic dividend in human history. These are not projections designed to attract foreign capital. These are facts that will reshape the global economy whether the world is paying attention or not. The question for Hungarian business is simply: will you be part of it?

1. India's Reform Revolution

[Slide 7 — India's Reform Revolution: From Licence Raj to Global Business Hub]

I understand that for many of you, the phrase 'India's reform programme' may carry the fatigue of having heard it for thirty years. I ask you to set that history aside — because what has happened in India over the past decade is categorically different in both scale and execution from anything that came before.

The Goods and Services Tax unified twenty-nine separate state markets into a single national market — overnight. India's ranking on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index moved from one hundred and forty-two to sixty-three. FDI approvals that once took months now happen through a single digital window in seventy-two hours. Our Production-Linked Incentive schemes — totalling twenty-six billion US dollars across fourteen sectors — are drawing global manufacturers who are looking to establish India as their export base to the world. Our infrastructure investment is now running at over one hundred and fifty billion US dollars per year — NHAI is adding fifty kilometres of highways every single day. Defence and space are open to one hundred percent foreign direct investment for the first time in our history.

And our digital infrastructure — the Unified Payments Interface, which now processes fourteen billion transactions monthly — has made India one of the most sophisticated digital economies on earth. Our startup ecosystem is the third-largest in the world, with over one hundred unicorns and counting.

This is not reform as aspiration. This is reform as execution. And it is happening now.

[Slide 8 — India's Rising Role in the Global Economy]

India is no longer on the margins of global economic architecture. We sit at the G20, the Quad, the SCO, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. We are a founding partner of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. We are, in every meaningful sense, a central pillar of the emerging global order. To engage with India is not merely to enter a market — it is to position yourself at the fulcrum of the twenty-first century economy.

1. The Make in India Imperative

[Slides 9–11 — Make in India & The PLI Power Play]

Now — for those of you who are thinking about manufacturing: I want you to hear this clearly. The economics of making in India are, at this moment in history, perhaps the most compelling of any country in the world.

Labour costs run at five to eight percent of EU rates for skilled manufacturing workers. Corporate tax for new manufacturing entities stands at a flat fifteen percent. Industrial parks offer plug-and-play infrastructure at costs far below anything available in Europe. And on top of these structural advantages, the Government of India is paying you — directly — to manufacture here, through Production-Linked Incentives of five to twenty percent on incremental sales, for five years, across fourteen priority sectors including electronics, renewables, automotive, food processing, and pharmaceuticals.

By 2030, India targets five hundred gigawatts of renewable capacity. Our automotive market is already the world's third-largest, with a major electric vehicle push underway. And our defence modernisation programme — worth one hundred and thirty billion US dollars — is explicitly designed to attract foreign manufacturing partners who will co-produce on Indian soil. The PLI scheme is not a subsidy. It is an investment in partnership. India is, in effect, paying you to win.

[Slide 12 — Success at Scale]

This is not theoretical. The evidence is already here. Siemens, Bosch, ABB — they now count India among their most profitable global markets. And closer to home: Hungary's own Gedeon Richter operates a fully export-oriented manufacturing facility in Vapi, Gujarat — supporting global market expansion from an Indian base that offers scale, regulatory expertise, and production economics unavailable anywhere else. If Richter has already found its competitive edge in India, what is preventing others in this room from doing the same?

1. Hungary and India — The Commercial Foundation

[Slides 13–14 — Hungary ↔ India Today]

Let me turn now to what we have already built together — because the foundation is stronger than many appreciate, and the trajectory is unmistakably upward.

Bilateral trade between Hungary and India stands at approximately one-and-a-half billion euros annually — and it has grown sixty-five percent over the past decade. Over three hundred and fifty Indian companies are active in Hungary. The Indian FDI pipeline into the EU — including Hungary — exceeds four billion euros. These are not trivial numbers. They are the proof of concept for a partnership that is ready to scale.

Hungary exports to India machinery and equipment, pharmaceuticals, electrical components, automotive parts, and agricultural products. India sends Hungary IT services and software, pharmaceutical APIs and generics, engineering goods, textiles, and gems. And our areas of emerging cooperation — information technology, water management, smart cities, healthcare, renewable energy, and R&D — are precisely the sectors where both our nations are investing most heavily in their futures.

[Slide 15 — Why Hungary and India Are Natural Partners]

The fit between our two economies is not accidental — it is structural. Hungarian precision engineering, combined with Indian scale manufacturing, produces globally competitive exports that neither country could achieve alone. Hungary's world-class pharmaceutical R&D ecosystem complements India's generics manufacturing capability in ways that are now being replicated by Richter and others. India's five million IT professionals, matched with Hungary's deep-tech research and development capacity, are already building product synergies from Budapest to Bangalore. And Hungarian agri-processing technology, meeting India's vast and ambitious food processing sector, represents a frontier that is barely touched. These are natural partnerships. The only question is pace.

VII. The India–EU Free Trade Agreement — The Game Has Changed

[Slides 16–17 — The India–EU FTA: Key Provisions & Breakthrough]

And now to the agreement that changes everything.

The India–EU Free Trade Agreement — years in negotiation, sometimes suspended, ultimately concluded — is the most consequential trade accord between India and any partner of comparable scale. Allow me to be specific about what it delivers, because specificity is what turns opportunity into action.

Ninety percent or more of goods will see tariffs phased to zero. Indian import duties — which averaged fourteen-point-four percent — will be slashed. EU firms gain open access to India's services market under Mode 3 and Mode 4 provisions. Bilateral investment treaty protections cover IP, dispute resolution, and regulatory certainty. Geographical indications — Hungary's Tokaj, India's Darjeeling — receive mutual recognition. And standards alignment and regulatory convergence across multiple sectors reduce the cost of doing business across our shared trade space.

This is not a marginal improvement. This is a structural shift in the economics of India–EU commerce.

[Slide 18 — Implications for Hungarian Businesses]

The transformation for Hungarian businesses is stark. Before the FTA: average tariffs of fourteen to twenty percent on goods entering India, complex regulatory divergence, limited services market access, uncertain IP protection, no preferential origin benefits. After the FTA: tariffs of zero to three percent on ninety percent of products, mutual recognition of standards, an open services market, treaty-level investment protection, and — critically — EU rules of origin applying from Hungary. Products made in Hungary carry EU origin credentials. Products made in India in collaboration with Hungarian partners access EU markets on preferential terms. The arbitrage opportunities this creates are extraordinary.

VIII. Your Playbook — Buy, Sell, Invest, and Make in India

[Slides 19–22 — Your Playbook: Buy · Sell · Invest · Make in India]

Let me be direct about the four modes of engagement available to Hungarian businesses — and why each of them, in the post-FTA environment, represents a compelling proposition.

Buy from India. Hungary currently imports approximately three hundred million euros in pharmaceuticals annually. India supplies thirty percent of the world's generic medicines. At zero tariff, under the FTA, the margin savings are transformative — for your healthcare system, for your manufacturing input costs, for your supply chain resilience. And it is not just pharmaceuticals: engineering components, IT services, textiles, specialty chemicals, food and agricultural products — all become dramatically more cost-competitive from Indian sources post-FTA.

Sell to India. Five hundred million middle-class consumers. A machinery import bill exceeding fifty billion US dollars. Healthcare spending doubling by 2030. India's equivalent of a Green Deal creating tens of billions of dollars in environmental technology contracts. Premium consumer goods growing at twenty-five percent annually. A government procurement market in software and SaaS opening to EU firms for the first time. Every tariff rate I showed you — fourteen percent on precision machinery, twelve on medical devices, twenty on premium goods — goes to near zero under the FTA. The Indian market that was partially closed to you is now open. Walk through the door.

Invest in India. The combination of FDI liberalisation, PLI incentives, infrastructure investment, and now the FTA creates an investment environment that simply did not exist five years ago. Joint ventures, wholly-owned subsidiaries through the automatic FDI route, greenfield manufacturing, licensing arrangements — all are available, all are actively supported by Indian authorities, and all now carry the additional assurance of treaty-level investment protection under the FTA.

And above all — Make in India. I return to this because it is the strategy of maximum advantage. Manufacture in India, with EU inputs, at Asian costs, under FTA tariff protection, for customers worldwide. The PLI incentives make India your most profitable factory floor. The FTA makes Indian-produced goods competitive in European and global markets. The network of fifty-plus free trade agreements that India has signed — with ASEAN, with the UK, with the UAE, with African markets — makes India a hub for global export. This is not a market entry strategy. It is a global competitiveness strategy.

1. The Practical Path Forward

[Slides 23–25 — Entry Roadmap, Success Stories & Risks]

I know that for many of you, the question is not whether — it is how. So let me give you the practical path.

Begin with market feasibility. Engage Invest India — the Indian Investment Promotion Agency. Track FTA working group updates through appropriate channels. Commission legal due diligence on your entry mode options. Identify the Indian states whose PLI and sector incentive structures align with your industry. And — attend, or send your teams to — the India-EU Business Forum, the CII Partnership Summit, and the Indian Chamber of Commerce events that are specifically designed to facilitate exactly this kind of engagement. The Commercial Wing of the Embassy remains available to you for guiding you through this process.

The HELL Energy story is worth pausing on. A Hungarian brand entered the fiercely competitive Indian energy drink market in 2018 — against entrenched incumbents. Within five years, HELL Energy captured the number-one position in the aluminium can energy drink segment in India, displacing a monopoly that had stood for two decades. This happened not because HELL was the largest company in the world, but because they came prepared, they committed fully, and they trusted that India would reward boldness with scale. It did.

Yes — there are risks. Regulatory complexity, IP protection, cultural norms, logistics, and FTA ratification timelines are all real considerations. I will not pretend otherwise. But for every risk I have just named, there is a proven mitigation: India-specialist legal counsel, DPIIT's Invest India hand-holding programme, the strengthened IP enforcement regime post-2016, established Special Economic Zones and dedicated freight corridors, and — perhaps most importantly — the lesson of every company that has waited too long and found that the best partners, the best positions, and the best incentive windows had already been claimed by those who came first.

The risks of entering India late are now greater than the risks of entering India now. I say this not as a diplomat seeking to attract investment to my country — I say this as an honest reading of the data.

1. Conclusion — The Moment Is Now

[Slide 26 — The Tiger Is Sprinting. Are You Running With It?]

Ladies and gentlemen — the India–EU Free Trade Agreement will be the most consequential trade accord for Hungarian businesses in a generation. It does not merely reduce tariffs. It redefines the strategic logic of doing business with India. It removes barriers that have stood for decades. It provides legal certainty that investors have long sought. And it arrives at precisely the moment when India's own transformation — in scale, in governance, in infrastructure, in digital capability — makes the opportunity it creates uniquely powerful.

The window to establish first-mover advantage — in sourcing, in selling, in manufacturing — is open right now. But windows do not remain open indefinitely. The partners who will define the next chapter of India–Hungary commercial relations are being chosen today. The JV agreements being signed today will shape the competitive landscape for the next twenty years. The manufacturing facilities being established today will be the global export hubs of 2035.

The best time to enter India was ten years ago. The next best time is now.

India is ready. The agreement is in place. The new Hungarian government is a willing partner. And the Embassy of India in Budapest — my team and I — stand fully at your disposal. Commission your feasibility studies. Send your delegations. Reach out to our Commercial Desk. Begin the conversation.

The tiger is sprinting. I invite you — warmly, confidently, and with the full weight of our bilateral friendship behind me — to run with it.

Dhanyavaad. Köszönöm szépen. Thank you.