The National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) has not paid some of its tender winners for many months – a Hungarian company that won a tender and regularly tries to obtain information from the office told us. It is quite a lot of money, in some cases several tens of millions of forints, or even over a hundred million, the non-arrival of which endangers not only the tender projects, but also the companies themselves.
In the case of the entrepreneur who contacted Telex, it is an old story, in which the winning company received half of the support received in 2021, but after spending it and its own resources (after the first settlement, when the advance for the next stage could be requested), the office became exhausted sources. The company could no longer stop the development, as long as it could, it tried to finance the continuation on its own. Although the office is bound by all kinds of deadlines, precisely so that the developments do not become impossible in the middle of the process, the NKFIH does not refer, even though the wages of the researchers should already be paid. We also inquired at the office, both officially and informally, but so far we have not received a meaningful answer.
As we heard, raising the problem is legitimate, they don’t want to deny that unfortunately the news is true, but they didn’t give an explanation. According to our source, the administrators and heads of departments are arguing on the phone that the office is introducing a new payment system, which is still being tested. Allegedly, there are some customers who still have their eligible tender payments for 2023, others for 2024, dried up.
President Ádám Kiss is of course aware of the problem, as there are already desperate tender winners who try to inform him personally about the slippage. We’ve heard that the upward deflection is also going on, there were some customers who received information as if the ball was bouncing at the state treasury, in any case
the existence of projects and companies is threatened by incomprehensible shutdowns.
It is said that the relevant ministry (Ministry of Culture and Innovation) will soon communicate about the unfortunate situation that has developed. As we heard, it is also common among those involved that the problem is very extensive, practically no money has gone out at all, and no one has any deadline or promise as to when this will happen, everyone is pointing upwards. In this way, it is much more difficult for the companies involved to even take out a loan, since they do not know how long the bridging loan would be needed to save the projects at all.
Tags: NKFIH pay awarded grants winning research development projects danger
