Chapter 3: Hungary

(continued)

3.2 Methodology

Sources of Information Used in the Survey

The information contained within this country report is based on 49 formal interviews with senior-level representatives of environmental business, and a smaller number from authorities and R&D institutions. Interviews were based on the standard questionnaire adopted for the entire survey. Additional information sources included informal conversations, a desk study of the available literature and publications on the environmental market in Hungary, and a review of environmental technology-related governmental programs.

The list of formal interviews, informal personal discussions, and literature is included in Sections 3.8, 3.9, 3.10.

Profile of Respondents

Senior representatives of 49 organizations were interviewed for the survey. The following criteria were used in selecting parties for interviews:

coverage of all environmental sectors, and energy, noise, occupational health and safety;
significant position on the market;
representative sample of different types of organizations (ownership, size, structure, expertise);
location in different regions of the country;
interviews with the most significant environmental technology R&D centers.

Distribution of the respondents by sector was as follows:

business sector     64%
government sector   18%
R&D sector          18%

Eighty percent of the interviewed organizations were active in one, two, or three of the five target sectors. Half of the interviewed environmental businesses were active only in one field, usually waste management or water treatment. Covering all five target sectors equally was hard to implement in practice, because many companies had activities related to water, wastewater and sludge. In contrast, only a handful of businesses dealt with air, noise and vibration, or operational health and safety. The nature of business sector activity is as follows:

services            58%
consulting          22%
trade               15%
manufacturing        5%

Those companies with the highest turnover were generally involved in trade or were service providers (e.g. municipal service providers). Among smaller companies, a high proportion were consultancy firms.

53 percent of the interviewed companies were established before 1990 (or had a legal predecessor established prior to 1990). New ventures usually included small and medium-sized enterprises (Hungarian-owned or joint-ventures) while older parties tended to be larger companies.

Overall, the market is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. The distribution of business sector respondents by size (measured by number of employees) was as follows:

fewer than 10       53%	
between 10 and 100  37%	
more than 100       10%

More than a half of the companies surveyed had fewer than 10 employees. Only one in ten employed more than 100 environment-related staff.

Regarding turnover figures, 55 percent of the respondents classified their organization as medium-sized; the remaining 45 percent considered their companies small. Not a single respondent considered their organization to be large. Notably, only two thirds of companies responding revealed annual turnover figures.

The summary breakdown of turnover is as follows:

below HUF 10 million               23%
(approx. USD 60,000)
between HUF 10 and 100 million     41%
(USD 60,000-600,000)
over HUF 100 million               36%
(over USD 600,000)

Approximately two thirds of the businesses interviewed had a representative office, or were headquartered in Budapest, while a third operated in other locations.

As for the geographic extent of activities, respondents indicated the following:

local               25%
national            42%
international       33%

Joint-ventures were generally international.

REC * PUBLICATIONS * ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY MARKET * HUNGARY