The head of the State Agency for Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Development Mustafa Nayem suggested creating a Project Implementation Unit consisting of specialists certified by international institutions who would be able to implement a unified procedure for Advanced Procurement and other stages of project implementation.
“Today it takes from 5 months to a year from the moment of allocation of funds until all procedures are passed and the contract for execution of works is signed. There are tens of thousands of such projects ahead of us. With the current procedures of international financial institutions, the reconstruction will take a century,” he said at the Ukrainian-American Partnership Forum organized by the American Chambers of Commerce of the two countries this week in Washington.
Nayem stressed that Ukraine is fundamentally different from other countries that were rebuilt by a coalition of partners after the war, such as Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, because in Ukraine all authorities at the central and local levels continue to work.
“But it also has its “minuses”: reconstruction in Ukraine will not be from scratch, it is not greenfield construction. Internal approvals, procedures, regulation, etc. – is a big part of the processes that will affect the speed and efficiency of recovery,” said the head of the State Recovery Agency.
In his opinion, the main challenge will be not so much the lack of funds for reconstruction, but the inability to use existing resources. Nayem specified that now we have already received applications for 11-12 thousand objects.
At the same time, he stressed that Ukraine clearly understands the need to account for each spent international institutions and taxpayers of partner countries. In this connection the head of the State Restoration Agency informed about the plans to launch the compliance function in the regional services of the agency and start the certification according to the standard ISO 37001 (anti-bribery management systems) in April already.
“Already this summer, together with the team of the Ministry (of Reconstruction), we present a unified digital ecosystem for reconstruction management DREAM (Digital Reconstruction Ecosystem for Accountable Management), which will allow full access to the data of all reconstruction projects,” Nayem said.
At the same time, he called on international reconstruction partners to clearly and clearly define the criteria and mechanisms of transparency in the implementation of reconstruction projects.
