National
Development Agency

According to the plans this year the NDA announces calls for tenders for the remaining part of the 2007-2013 total support budget that is for HUF 289 billion altogether. The objective is to complete this already in the first quarter of 2013. This year the Agency has to grant about HUF 1,197 billion to the successful tenderers, by which the total resources for the 2007-2013 programming period will be committed that is 100% of the EU money will be absorbed.  Furthermore, the NDA has to pay out more than HUF 1,500 billion this year in order to get the funding to the Hungarian tenderers safely with the full use of the resources.
 
The abovementioned plans are not unfounded in view of the fact that the National Development Agency was able to achieve outstanding results in 2012. Coming closer to the end of the programming period the NDA set remarkable goals and last year almost without exception all of them were achieved. Last year outperforming the plans calls for tenders and priority calls were published in the total value of HUF 906 billion. The total amount of support granted reached HUF 1,641 billion exceeding the projected targets by HUF 82 billion. By this the NDA not only achieved the objectives set forth in its annual plan, but also surpassed them.

Getting the EU resources to the targets is one of the most important tasks regarding which the Agency received a lot of criticism last year. However, the facts demonstrate that due to the continuous simplifications and developments the value of payouts reached HUF 1,043 billion last year. Since Hungary’s accession to the EU during the last 8 years never has this amount of support been delivered to the applicants. In 2012 the institution paid out more funding than the total payouts of the first three and a half years of the EU programming cycle. The institutional system is working on further accelerating the payouts in cooperation with the owners of the supported tenders so that the projects that are often delayed could be implemented in due time.

At the end of 2012 a record amount, nearly HUF 250 billion was successfully disbursed to the project owners, which proves that the institutional system is able to manage payouts of any amount. With this performance in the 2007-2013 EU programming period Hungary has drawn the 5th largest amount of resources from the 27 member states.

To achieve the abovementioned results the tender system required significant restructuring and continuous development. The administrative burdens of the tenderers and beneficiaries have been substantially decreased by shortening the assessment deadlines and the amount of paper-based administration. The new system is characterized by more simple reports and shorter tender datasheets. Only by decreasing the administrative burdens the institutional system managed to save as much as HUF 3.3 billion. 

Another simplification was the introduction of electronic notifications, through which beneficiaries could get information about the decisions related to their tenders promptly. In 2012 hundreds of thousands of notifications were sent, more than half of which reached the project owners within 24 hours. This is orders of magnitude faster compared to the 5-7 day paper-based delivery and also a significant cost reduction factor. It was also an innovation that suppliers can directly – not only through the beneficiaries – request advance payments from the NDA. As a result, based on the public procurement procedures conducted in the second half of 2012 in the near future advance payments to suppliers can be paid out in the order of magnitude of approximately HUF 100 billion.

For the complete drawdown of the 2007-2013 EU funding budget building on the previous measures even closer cooperation is required between the institutional system and the tenderers in order to realize the concepts of the tenderers from the granted money and for Hungary to be able to draw its EU resources.  Therefore, in order to achieve the goals set the NDA – in continuous cooperation with the tenderers – would like to further accelerate the placement of resources and plans to introduce several improvements in 2013 as well.