Vitaliy Koval, Chairman of the State Property Fund of Ukraine

 

 Ukraine no longer wants to ask, it chooses to pitch. This is the best way to characterize the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024. This is the third such event - the previous two took place in 2022 in Lugano and in 2023 in London. These conferences are aimed at garnering international support for Ukraine’s long-term recovery. At the same time, they address more immediate issues of restoring, for example, Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.

 Main results and changes in the format of the dialog

 This year’s conference in Berlin brought together more than 2,000 leaders, officials, representatives of international organizations and businesses. The geography of the participants covered more than 60 countries. And the format of communication between them has reached a qualitatively new level.

 This time, the government delegation came with ready-made business projects, not just a list of requests. And its representatives behaved like pitchers. The presentation of the projects was well prepared, well-reasoned, and included a lot of analytics.

 As a result, all the meetings were mostly about specific investments and financing of real projects, not about abstract plans for an unknown future. The dialog was no longer theoretical, it became practical: instead of the conditional ‘to the end’ or ‘as long as necessary,’ the discussion was about specific amounts and directions. At the event, the Ministry of Economy presented the Investment Guide of Ukraine, which includes 95 investment projects worth $27 billion. The document and the conference agenda in general focused on the energy, logistics, agriculture, healthcare, IT, and environmental markets.

 From Berlin, Ukraine managed to ‘bring back’ 110 agreements worth more than 16 billion euros (or approximately $17 billion). The international community has now begun to consider various opportunities for cooperation with greater readiness, as it sees the transformation of Ukraine on its way to European integration.

 Our country has fulfilled all the conditions for starting negotiations on joining the EU, and its members have already approved the negotiation framework for us. And June 25, 2024, can be called a historic day - it was the day when official negotiations on our accession to the European Union began. On this occasion, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasized that Ukraine has demonstrated an unwavering commitment and determination to become part of the EU. 

Our partners recognize our reforms and the efforts we are making to support the economy in such extremely difficult conditions. Even with the war, our economy grew by more than 5% in 2023. For 2024, the EBRD forecasts this figure at 3%. Although, of course, we will not be able to reach the level of 2021, the presence of growth is a good signal. 

What are partners ready to invest in? 

Given that Ukraine needs hundreds of billions of dollars for full recovery, there are projects that need to be implemented now to solve urgent problems. Each session and meeting of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 raised the topics of restoring the energy sector, addressing the shortage of professional staff, and increasing the efficiency of using available resources. 

These discussions have resulted in more than a dozen different agreements in the energy sector. Most of them are part of the full-fledged Ukraine Investment Framework program aimed at attracting investment for Ukraine’s recovery and development. 

Among the major agreements is a EUR 60 million loan from the EBRD to OKKO Group for the construction of a bioethanol plant. The same EBRD will support the German company Goldbeck Solar to build up to 500 MW of solar generation in Ukraine over the next few years. Germany’s NOTUS Energy is implementing a plan to build 300 MW of wind power plants, with the first phase having a capacity of 120 MW. 

Another critical area is human capital. Almost every sector of the economy and government agencies at all levels are currently experiencing a shortage of personnel. According to the participants’ estimates, over the next 10 years, Ukraine will need to train more than 1.5 million specialists in various fields. 

Our partners are ready to help with this: the plan for the next three years alone is to train 180,000 people and adapt them to new market needs. To give such industries as construction, transportation, IT, engineering, healthcare, etc. a resource for development. The main focus will be on internally displaced persons, youth, veterans and other vulnerable groups. To this end, the Ministry of Economy, in partnership with 50 countries, international organizations and companies, has created the Skills Alliance for Ukraine. Its members will finance this project in the amount of 700 million euros. 

Different organizations presented their areas of support separately. For example, USAID emphasized energy security projects, which are currently undergoing a redistribution of funding. GIZ shared its initiatives to support small and medium-sized businesses and women’s leadership in Ukraine, etc. 

Foreign business representatives at the conference also demonstrated their willingness to help Ukraine. For example, an entrepreneur from Germany who now has a company in Ukraine purchased a factory in Kalush through privatization and set up wallpaper production there. According to him, even during the war, he has profit, demand, and all the opportunities to work. He has created safe and comfortable conditions for his employees, which are essential in these difficult times. Even with the power outage, he said, he managed to work because ‘Ukrainians are creative and find ways out of all situations’. 

Such business cases are the best ‘advertising’ for our country and proof to other entrepreneurs that investing in our country is profitable and timely. 

SPFU at Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 

The SPFU team also attended the conference. We told our partners how the Fund is currently working to support the economy and what areas of cooperation we can offer to representatives of different markets.  

One of the key issues of the event was the involvement of the private sector in the reconstruction of Ukraine. Therefore, the Fund presented to the conference participants the investment potential of the enterprises under its management that could be interesting for privatization. Among them were agricultural and mining (in particular, titanium industry) enterprises, distilleries, and generally brownfield projects that have most of the necessary infrastructure to start working quickly. 

One of the important outcomes of the conference was the signing of memorandums between the SPFU and YANMAR and Kubota. These companies will help modernize agricultural machinery at state-owned agricultural enterprises managed by the Fund and increase the productivity of this sector through the use of Japanese products and technologies. 

During the visit to Germany, we also talked about how the SPFU is being transformed from within and how this generally demonstrates new priorities and approaches in the work of Ukrainian government agencies. Currently, the Fund is working towards digitalization, digitalization and automation, improving its human resources policy, and improving the methods of asset management available to the Fund. 

As proof of this, they talked about more than a dozen different projects that have already been implemented or are in progress. These include e-document management, automated notification systems, a new portal as a central point for obtaining information and access to various services, and a chatbot. These include the SPFU HRIMS, IT resource management (ITSM) and early risk response (ERS) systems, etc.

The changes that Ukraine demonstrated to the international community at URC 2024 - both qualitative transformations of the authorities from within and in communication with partners - increase the level of trust in our country.

At the same time, the conference provided an opportunity to remind us that no matter how much investment is made, Ukraine still needs to be able to defend itself - weapons and air defense systems. This is one of the ways to preserve the economic life of our country and reduce the amount of damage that will have to be repaired after the war is over.