At a national professional conference in Siófok, Rigó Csaba Balázs, the president of the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH), stated that market competition is effectively present in Hungary, even when compared to similar data from Western European economies.

He highlighted the importance of public institutions demonstrating the societal benefits and added value of their work, asserting that the tax dollars spent on the GVH yield significant returns for the national economy and consumers.

Since joining the Hungarian Financial and Economic Auditors Association in May 2025, Balázs has been elected as the vice president of the organization, which promotes continuous knowledge sharing among its members.

During his presentation, Balázs stressed the growing importance of reliable and high-quality data for making informed decisions. The GVH aims to provide comprehensive and credible data regarding the Hungarian economy, aspects of market competition, and its own operations.

One key initiative is the updated Competition Statistics database, developed in collaboration with the Hungarian National Bank, which quantifies 79 indicators across four major themes: market structure, pricing, profitability, and productivity.

Balázs noted that while the Hungarian economy has become somewhat more concentrated from 2008 to the early 2020s, similar trends have been observed in major European economies. He pointed out that Hungary has a higher market concentration compared to these economies, but the increase has been less pronounced over the past decade.

He also discussed the GVH's efforts to quantify the societal benefits of its activities through ex-ante impact assessments, estimating that consumer savings from the GVH's antitrust actions from early 2020 to October 2025 will be 2.1 times the GVH's budget for the same period.

Balázs provided examples of the GVH's impact, including significant savings for consumers from the temporary opening of the retail market for COVID-19 rapid tests and the suspension of raw milk price forecasts, which resulted in direct consumer benefits.

Finally, he introduced the online Price Monitoring system, developed in collaboration with the government, which tracks prices of around 5,000 products across 140 categories, leading to substantial savings for Hungarian households.