Help begins at home

Hungarian privatization has helped place the economy among the best emerging-market performers of the 1990s. However, questions about the transparency of deals reappeared this year.

THE BUDAPEST STOCK Exchange had a very good year in 2002. Having fallen in the late 1990s under pressure from the Russian financial crisis and a Hungarian government that delayed pro-market reforms, it recovered strongly to become the world’s fourth-best performer in 2002.

The capitalization of the exchange could be bigger – it has traditionally been dominated by a few big corporates such as energy corporation MOL, telecom company Matav and OTP, a bank. Many of the country’s smaller-capitalization companies were wiped out in the Russia crisis, and some of the biggest privatizations of the 1990s were not flotations but sales to strategic investors.

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