Our latest survey in the SME Outlook – conducted in April 2010 – focused not only on the business situation of SMEs, but also on their experiences about late payment and the extent of chain indebtedness, as well as about their habits of internet usage.

Our latest survey in the SME Outlook – conducted in January 2010 – focused not only on the business situation of SMEs, but also on their experiences about late payment and the extent of chain indebtedness, as well as about the effects of financial crisis on the SME sector.

This is the 25th time that the Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research conducts a survey on the business climate among Hungarian enterprises. The survey relies on the answers of 1300-2000 managers and measures their opinion twice a year, every April and October. This time, our database consists the answers of 1640 managers.

Business anticipations of Hungarian enterprises positively changed according to the results of the latest IEER Business Tendency Survey. After the turning-point last October, the anticipations of Hungarian enterprises are continuously ameliorating. While the IEER Business Climate Index stayed at -9% last October, now it shows +14.8%.

Our latest survey in the SME Outlook – conducted in October 2009 – focused not only on the business situation of SMEs, but also on their opinions about the quality of the services of government institutions and offices, about the administrative burdens and about the effects of financial crisis on the SME sector.

The Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research - in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, with the Public Employment Service (ÁFSZ), and with the county chambers of commerce and industry - conducted a research on the expected demand of labor and short-term business expectations of 7151 enterprises. The results are representative in terms of the distibution of the size enterprises and the economic sector they belong to.

In the research, we also took into consideration the business situation of enterprises, their anticipations for the future, their applied strategies they use to alleviate the negative effects of the recession, their expected demand for labour in 2010, and their difficulties in recruting. Also, our analysis concentrated on the different employment forms and their effects on the enterprises. Our results cover the last four years.

According to the conjuncture indicators, the recession has already touched its bottom and recent analyses already show the signs of recovery. General tendency shows that recession hit especially the well-performing sectors of economy and as such accelerated equalization – the significant relapse of developed regions – in 2009.

Our study shows that 86% of enterprises took some efforts to deal with the effects of the recession, in most cases they reduced expenditures or tried to stabilize their market positions. Another result of the recession is, however, that recruiting became easier: while in 2008 14% of the enterprised found difficult to recruit staff, this number dropped by 2009 to 5%.

All the three datasets are available free of charge at the following web address: http://www.mmpp.hu/

This information booklet made by the HungarianChamber of Commerce and Industry aims to help students who intend to apply for vocational trainings. As choosing the right vocational program is crucial in terms of future work (andsalary) expectations or the possibility of continuing studies, our aim is to present the information about the structure of vocational training in an easily conceivable way. On the one hand, we are dealing with the quality of different vocational trainings based on the opinion of enrolled students, while on the other hand we present the expected amount of salary and estimated chances of getting a job after graduating from different vocational trainings.

The figures in this booklet are based on our own dataset that is available free of charge at the following web address http://www.ola.gvi.hu/.

The survey on the perspective of enterprises about the recession had been repeated in June 2009 by Institute for Economic and Enterprise Research.We provide analysis not only on the general characteristics of enterprises and different indicators of conjecture, but also on borrowings, foreign currency risks and financial disciplines of enterprises and the preventive actions they took in order to avoid the negative effects of the recession. The two datasets are available free of charge at the following web addresshttp://www.ola.gvi.hu/.

The results of the analysis revealed that the Hungarian enterprises take several preventive actions in order to avoid the negative effects of the recession. Companies with foreign ownership share and export-oriented companies are usually very adaptive to the new conditions. The analysis also reveals that one part of the enterprises were so extensively affected by the recession that they were technically forced to find every possible way to reduce the negative effects. This is why those companies who were involved in layoffs, most probably previously tried other ways to avoid the worst case scenario such as part-time working, reducing salary, delaying investments, or downsizing certain services. As such, layoffs and other downsizing programs are in auxiliary connection.

The key findings of the research were introduced to the public by giving a presentation in English at CIRET/KOF/GK Conference, Workshop on Sentiment Indicators and the Current Crisis on the 9th November 2009. See also: https://www.ciret.org/workshops/budapest/program. The analysis, the power point slides and the survey of the research (from March and June) can be found and downloaded in the appendix.

Our survey in the SME Outlook – conducted in July 2009 – focused not only on the business situation of SMEs, but also on their debts and potential involvements in chain indebtedness and responses to the economic recession.

IEER Business Climate Index shows a turning-point in the anticipations of Hungarian enterprises for the future. Between April and October 2009, the IEER Business Climate Index increased from -18% to -9%. Our latest results show that the economic recession touched its bottom in Q3 2009. As such, our hypothesis that predicted slight amelioration by the end of 2009 seems to be true.

Thisresearch program aims helping the regional development and training committees (RFKB – in Hungarian) in order to establish a quota of the maximum number of different vocational trainings. The research is based on IEER's own large-sample empiric survey from 2009. The survey asked about the opinion ofhiring institutes and organizations such as SME's, public offices and it also aimed finding out the opportunities that a recent graduates have on the labour market. In the analysis, we also evaluated the expected labour demand for vocational school graduates and compared the results to the expected number of recent graduates in 2012.