Re: Matador objects to Hankook incentives, Flash News, May 6, 2005
I think that one should look at this in a wider perspective. Multinational or transnational companiescoming to one's country do bring foreign capital and do create jobs.
This result can be positively incorporated into the country's statistics as foreign this and foreign that. To the multinational however, whatever it does is purely "internal", with merely an alternative and added set of [tax] laws to consider.
Had Hankook chosen the Czech Republic or Hungary or Poland, it could have settled just across the border from Slovakia, and would be equally harmful to Matador. The difference to Hankook would be almost nothing, while Slovakia would have fewer jobs and slower development of its infrastructure.
The only thing Matador can do is to lobby the EU to try and get the incentive reduced, which would not negatively influence the investment, for the EU decision would apply to the neighbouring countries also.
Oscar,
Radošovce, Slovakia
