USAID will work with the U.S. Congress to invest an additional $230 million of new resources in Ukrainian businesses, particularly to help businesses comply with European Union regulations and export more goods and services to Europe, USAID Chief Samantha Power said.
“USAID will work with the U.S. Congress to invest $230 million of new resources in Ukrainian businesses. This will include everything from technical assistance to businesses that want to scale and expand, technical assistance to help them comply with EU regulations so they can export more of their products and services to Europe and create more jobs for more Ukrainians,” she said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.
At the same time, she emphasized that businesses cannot grow unless they are provided with affordable capital. Power noted that many financial institutions consider investments in Ukrainian businesses too risky.
“So we are going to expand the use of instruments such as low-interest loans or grants for businesses, first-loss guarantees that will reduce the risk of investing in Ukraine. And we’re going to work together to attract more investment and more private sector participation here in Ukraine, which again is an investment in the resilience of today and also in the economy of tomorrow,” she said.
As Power noted, this new commitment is “just one of many that the United States has made to the Ukrainian people this week.”
