Have you thought about how much HUF 15,000 billion is?

The news came out yesterday that the value of the 35-year highway concession contract was revealed:

“In 2022, the government granted a concession for 35 years to a consortium of private companies for the majority of the Hungarian highway and expressway network. Szabad Európa sued the annexes to the contract, which revealed that the deal could cost taxpayers HUF 15-17 thousand billion. It was already known that the tender was won by Magyar Koncessziós Infrastructure Fejlsztő Zrt. (MKIF), a group of private equity funds owned by Lőrinc Mészáros and László Szíjj. (Source: 444)

I realized that this was an amazingly large number, but I felt that it was enough to put it into context, so I gathered a couple of benchmarks:

HUF 15,000 billion equals:

– 22.6% of the total Hungarian GDP in 2022, i.e. more than a fifth

– if you built the Puskás Arena 100 times

– if you would buy almost HALF of the ENTIRE housing stock in Budapest (exactly 45%: 930,000 apartments, average floor area of ​​43 m2, average price of HUF 850,000/m2 in 2022)

– if you were to build 250,000 family houses from scratch (100 m2, 600,000 HUF/m2)

– if you buy approx. 1.5 million Suzuki Vitaras, which is like buying all the Suzukis that roll out of the Esztergom factory for 10 years

– if you bought Vodafone 23 times (I think this is surprisingly little)

If this money…

– you can save 1%, then you are the 10th richest Hungarian (assuming you had 0 HUF in savings)

– you can save the 4%, then you will have as much money as Lőrinc Mészáros, the richest Hungarian, has saved so far

– you can put away 20% (HUF 3,000 billion – USD 8.2 billion) and add your huddled HUF 591 billion, then you have approximately USD 10 billion in assets, which means that you are one of the 200 richest people in the world (somewhere around 190-200 based on the 2023 list). In other words, you are in the richest 0.0000000252% of the world.

Of course, it is 35 years, but this value can still be linked to a single contract.