Non-partisan effort behind Mercedes choice of Kecskemet for factory: mayor - paper

While the city of Kecskemet, 100 km SE of Budapest, had many features going for it, Daimler's choice of the city for a new factory was the outcome of a non-partisan effort, Mayor Gabor Zombor of opposition Fidesz told Monday's national daily Nepszabadsag.Kecskemet is easy to access and had outstanding logistics, Zombor said, adding that many German businesses in the area had established a German style of management and work that Daimler clearly found encouraging. The city is also home to a Technical College of Engineering and Automation, which can train labour and serve as a research base.



None of that would have been enough, however, the mayor continued, had the country, the central government, not put together a satisfactory package to encourage it. In addition, the city of Kecskemet cut the local business tax by four tenths of a percent since Zombor took office, to encourage employers to settle and/or stay there.



Zombor described the all-out effort made locally in the two-day period between learning that Kecskemet was being considered by Mercedes and the arrival of a professional delegation to explore the city.



"We worked around the clock from Monday to Wednesday to pull together an up-to-the-minute database, mobilizing our significant service providers to do the same," Zombor told Nepszabadsag.



The presence of Mercedes in Kecskemet will, we hope, improve the general attitude towards work, and the style with which public life is conducted, he added.



mti.hu