New Delhi: The World Bank Board of Executive Directors on June 7, 2022, approved $1.49 billion of additional financing for Ukraine under the Public Expenditures for Administrative Capacity Endurance in Ukraine Project. This new financing is part of the total support package of over $4 billion that the World Bank is mobilizing, which is up from the earlier estimated $3 billion. Nearly $2 billion of this funding has been disbursed.
Funding from this latest project will be used to pay for wages for government and social workers. The project has benefited from financing guarantees from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Latvia; parallel financing from Italy, and expected future guarantees, including from Denmark. The project has also been co-financed by contributions to a new Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) from several countries, including Switzerland.
“The World Bank Group is providing continuing support for Ukraine and its people in the face of the ongoing war,” said World Bank Group President David Malpass. “We are working with donor countries to mobilize financial support and leveraging the flexibility of our various financing instruments to help provide Ukrainians with access to health services, education, and social protection.”
The World Bank’s portfolio of projects in Ukraine supports improvements in public services that directly benefit ordinary people, in areas such as water supply, sanitation, heating, power, energy efficiency, roads, social protection, education, and healthcare.
“Maintaining these core services, and the ability of the government to deliver them, is essential to preventing further deterioration in living conditions and poverty in Ukraine beyond the suffering inflicted on the population because of the war,” said World Bank Country Director for Eastern Europe Arup Banerji. “In addition, keeping government capabilities functioning will be the bedrock of any recovery and reconstruction going forward.”
A recent roadmap issued by the World Bank outlines the Bank Group’s initial short-term response and proposed a medium-term, targeted approach encompassing the 15 months from April 2022 to June 2023.
Since Ukraine joined the World Bank in 1992, the Bank’s commitments to the country have totaled almost $16 billion in about 90 projects and programs, including the project approved on June,7,2022.
(Vinayak)