KYIV. May 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The government of Germany has announced its readiness to funnel EUR 200 million into the Energy Efficiency Fund, which is being created by Ukraine to raise assets from international financial organizations for projects to boost energy efficiency in Ukraine.
The condition for disbursing the German funds is the development by the Ukrainian government of a model to return the disbursed funds, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Economy Hennadiy Zubko said during a briefing at a forum on energy efficiency partnership in Kyiv on Friday.
“There is a clear offer from the German government about EUR 200 million, which could be injected in that Fund, but they need to be clearly demonstrated how these assets will be returned by the consumers of that Fund,” he said.
According to Zubko, as part of the search for such a model, the Energy Efficiency Fund is mulling the Ukrainian side’s financial participation in filling up the Fund at the expense of money left after the payment of subsidies allocated for the compensation of households’ housing and utilities costs, due to the introduction of energy efficiency and energy saving technologies, he said.
“We had a very simple proposal: to send that money to replenish the Fund, and due to a reduction in gas consumption, every year we’ll have fewer people who will apply for the subsidies,” he added.
According to him, the Ukrainian government is also in talks on raising loans for Kyiv-based Oschadbank, which participates in the Oschadny Dim (Saving
House) national program for partial reimbursement of interest rates on loans allocated to boost energy efficiency.
“I won’t announce [preliminary results of the talks] now, but we have initiated the talks with almost all [international financial organizations]:
the IFC, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, and I think it also concerns investment funds which work not only on our market,” he added.
Zubko said a commercial organization was created in Germany to support energy efficiency in Ukraine.
“This is a commercial organization, which is ready to come with technologies, which is ready to bring money for these technologies and implement energy efficient projects. I simply would like to mention how huge interest in Ukraine and in opportunities to work on a huge market estimated at UAH 300 billion is,” he said.
