KYIV. July 2 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is ready to discuss Ukraine’s proposals to help the country conduct privatization, and is also ready to assist regarding supplies of natural gas from the European Union, EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti told reporters after a meeting with the Ukrainian president and prime minister in Kyiv on Wednesday.
“As I told the president, we want to provide large aid to Ukraine in the privatization issue, but we should clearly know what will be sold, in what order and over what period,” he said.
Chakrabarti said that the bank has drawn up a large study on privatization in many countries of the region, and its aid on the issue could be effective.
When asked about gas supplies from Europe, the EBRD president said that in 2014 the bank decided not to support gas supplies from Slovakia to Ukraine.
“We’d like to help so that gas is supplied from the EU,” he said.
Chakrabarti said that EBRD is also interested in continuing cooperation with Ukraine in the power sector, in particular, the bank is ready to discus its participation jointly with the European Investment Bank (EIB) in a project to construct the Kaniv pump-storage plant.
“I will ask that in the future support is provided to the project,” he said.
He said that there are many opportunities for investing in Ukraine in other sectors, especially in agriculture.
Commenting on the situation in the banking system of Ukraine, Chakrabarti welcomed the work of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to cleanse the system, the reduction of the number of banks from 170 to around 150 thanks to the withdrawal of financial institutions that belonged to corrupt oligarchs who used them as purses and did not take into account the interests of citizens.
He said that reforms in the banking area should continue, the sector should be additionally capitalized and only strong banks that are not affiliated with corrupted oligarchs should remain on the market.
