English Translation

21 - 5 Purchasing power of those strata which form the usual buyer status of these shops. As long as these circles had savings besides their current income, there was something like a shopping frenzy, but these times are already over. In Hungary, the non-buyable demand, which can only be desired with the eyes through the shop windows, is without object in the market, if one can draw conclusions from occasional conversations, the hamster purchases must have reached substantial quantities in places. The volume of industrial production was greater in the second half of 19942 than in 194l. This favourable development was achieved despite increasing difficulties in the supply of raw materials and the increasingly palpable shortage of skilled workers. However, while mining and heavy industry achieved new records, most sectors of the consumer goods industry were forced to further limit their production, mainly because stocks of foreign raw materials were declining, which could not be offset by a significant improvement in the supply of substitutes. The investment activity was lively. The most remarkable was the increase in performance in the armaments industry; but the substitutes industry was also greatly expanded. In Hungary, at least at harvest time, there is no more unemployment; in the countryside, labour shortages can be felt in some places. On this point, the economy of the Pannonian level is beginning to converge vis-à-vis ours. Undoubtedly, the process of absorbing Hungarian unemployment, which is almost chronically, has been encouraged by the systematic transfer of orders. For the Hungarian industry, the problem of raw materials is sometimes beginning to become a bottleneck, which forces the local circles to pay more attention to the materials we have already introduced for years and days. This is not to say that Hungary has so far passed carelessly on the new materials, no matter in which branch of work; it is only to be indicated that the circles there have to devote themselves more intensively to the question of the new raw materials than before. In the future, the public participation, investment and benefits of the private initiative will be more concerned with the development of domestic sources of raw materials and the cessation of Varen for the production of art and substitutes. Increasingly, the provision of the necessary energy will be decisive. The expansion of two new hydroelectric power plants, one of which has already been put into operation, and two large-scale power plants based on low-quality coal, is under way, and a power plant AG and Transylvanian Natural Gas AG were established for the eastern Székler regions with state participation. Hungary's coal and naphtha production has also increased production rates; in the production of dauxite, Hungary is on the ege to become one of the most important suppliers, Hungary already processes this raw material into aluminium in its own country and the - 9 -