More than 150 company and purchasing managers and owners participated in the Supplier Forum aiming to inform and prepare Hungarian SMEs on how to become suppliers of global companies such as GE, aiming to increase its procurement value. Currently the company purchases goods and services for over 900 million USD in Hungary, which it aims to increase significantly. As outlined in its agreement on supplier development with the Ministry of National Economy, GE aims to achieve this by extending its Hungarian SME supplier base, sharing its know-how on digital technologies and helping larger Hungarian SMEs to become regional suppliers to be able to participate in global, regional and local infrastructure projects such as Paks II.
In Hungary, the SME sector employs the most employees, but its contribution to GDP is relatively low. Development of the competitiveness and digital capabilities of this sector is therefore a priority and mutual interest of the Government and global companies such as GE, which is able to absorb more goods and services to be supplied by Hungarian SMEs.
Led by this mutual interest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry of National Economy, The Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency, the State Secretariat Responsible for Paks II. co-hosted the Supplier Forum initiated by GE. Objective of the event was to explore opportunities to better connect Hungarian SMEs to the global economy via GE’s supply chain.
As part of the event SME leaders had the chance to learn directly from GE’s purchasers about the administrative, quality, information technology and delivery aspects of becoming supplier of a global company, while they were also informed about projects which they could actually join both globally and locally. One of these has been the Paks II. development project, to which GE supplies the steam turbines, turbo generators and auxiliary equipment, whereby it especially aims to rely on the its 1.300 Hungarian suppliers.
“Success of the Hungarian economy decisively depends on the success of the Hungarian SMEs. The forfeit of our sustainable dynamic growth is our ability to integrate the Hungarian owned SMEs to the global digital economy quickly and effectively -said Endre Ascsillán Dr., Vice-President of GE Hungary. „One of the main connection points in this process are global companies such as GE, aiming to increase their CEE procurement, which might not only help to integrate the Hungarian SME sector to the global economic blood system, but may also catalyse the integration of the region’s and the country’s economy”- added the Vice-President.
“Corporate and national economic growth in CEE goes hand in hand. While regional economies, with Hungary amongst them, needs global firms to develop their SMEs sector, we as GE need a stronger SME sector to support our infrastructure projects across the globe ” - said Peter Stracar, CEO of GE Europe. “Through this collaboration we wish to create future-safe, strong SMEs which are more prepared to use disruptive, digital technologies, are more innovation driven and ultimately have stronger export capabilities” -he added.
GE buys directly from over 30,000 suppliers from multiple locations around the world and the value of such transactions amounts to 70 billion USD globally, which is close to 50% of Hungary’s 124,3 billion USD GDP. For Europe, this value is approximately 9 billion USD annually out of which 1,7 billion USD comes from the CEE region. Supplied by 1.300 Hungarian qualified suppliers, this value is approximately 900 million USD annually for Hungary.