The World Bank has already begun work on fundraising and plans to create new trust funds at the request of Ukraine for $17 billion needed for urgent recovery, Roman Kachur, Alternate Executive Director for Ukraine at the World Bank, has said.
“To date, the government has prioritized the $17 billion needed for an urgent recovery, for the most necessary things until the end of 2023. To operate these funds, we are completing the registration of the trust funds,” Kachur said during an online conference of the Center for Economic Strategy on Tuesday .
According to him, the symbolic name of this fund will be MRIya – Multi-donor trust fund for recovery and institution and infrastructure.
Kachur recalled that on September 9, the World Bank and the European Commission presented a report prepared jointly with the UN and the government of Ukraine, according to which direct losses inflicted by Russia from the beginning of the war to June 1 amount to about $100 billion, economic losses – $250 billion, and funds to restore the destroyed until June 1 – about $350 billion.
Of these, the World Bank has set $105 billion as funds needed over the next 18-36 months, but given that “this is an unsustainable amount for either donors or the government,” the government has prioritized $17 billion.
The representative of Ukraine in the World Bank said that trust funds would have to act as a multiplier so that Ukraine could receive two or three dollars from one dollar of funds provided by donors.
“In fact, since Friday, September 9, the fundraising has already begun. We plan to hold a roundtable at the same level during the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in October as it was in April – at the level of finance ministers and heads of central banks of our donor partners – and in fact explain the situation and obtain certain commitments to provide funds,” Kachur said.
He said that since the beginning of the war, the World Bank has already transferred $9.4 billion from its own account and from the accounts of trust funds (including U.S. grants, UK guarantees), or 54 cents from every dollar of external support during this period.
