The supplier links of foreign-investment enterprises (FIEs) started to develop as soon as they commenced operations in Hungary. Thus, their interest in developing local roots was already clear. Empirical evidence has shown that some FIEs outsourced only a few services, while others tried to outsource as much of the production as they could. The demand of FIEs for local supplies depends very much on their status in the global network. Local affiliates of huge transnational corporations (TNCs) may play a rather marginal role, or their role and the scope and nature of their activity may change over time. In some periods, local TNC affiliates may also perform very simple activities of a subcontracting type. In fact, many do either assembly or simple labourintensive processing, which do not provide much room for local suppliers. Further investment can develop these activities towards greater added value and sophistication, but this may be influenced primarily by foreign direct investment (FDI) and investment policy, rather than by linkage promotion.

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However, there are some problems with the new projects, of which the most serious, perhaps, concerns the role of the state as a venture capitalist. Originally, programme- participant state-owned 'venturecapital' enterprises were established for the purpose of crisis management, not risk management, and may have troubles with their new role. Much depends on defining and describing tasks accurately. One of the major reasons for the inefficiency of the previous project was inadequate staff knowledge of what was expected. In fact, the new concept was not defined in detail, so that it is still unclear whether this mistake has been avoided this time. It may not be fair to ask a new institution to cope with all kinds of development preferences. Perhaps regional development issues should not be incorporated into this framework. However, the new institution is almost certain to increase further the spatial tensions in the country, by supporting the development of clusters in their present locations, which are relatively the most developed parts of Hungary. The analysis of the Hungarian linkage promotion package showed that the early years of operation did not bring a breakthrough and the new system is still under development. It was therefore difficult to find matching case-study evidence, i.e. case studies that contain some information about the usage of this particular development programme. However, there is plenty of evidence about linkages where the research is case-study based. Empirical surveys agree that Hungarian suppliers play an appreciable, if fairly small role in FIE activity. The scale of the contribution lags far behind what is found in developed countries, especially if foreign-owned suppliers are ignored. On the other hand, it is markedly higher than in the developing countries. The studies also agree that there is an increasing tendency, although the barriers on the side of Hungarian would-be suppliers are considerable, especially for SMEs.