The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, has invested $208 million in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, and in the next few months the amount of investments may increase to $500 million, said IFC Vice President for Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean Alfonso Garcia Mora.

"We are trying to really escalate, scale up our presence, our investments. I think that we can be at $500 million in the next few months, with over $200 million plus what we have currently in the pipeline," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"In the next 3-4 months, we have a pipeline of about $400 million. Itwill depend on the support from donors," he said.

"IFC launched a $2 billion response package to support the Ukrainian private sector in mid-December. This is a package that will allow us to invest $2 billion in the next 18 months: $1 billion from IFC’s own account alongside $1 billion in guarantees and concessional finance from international donors. We are in the process of receiving increased support from international donors, which will allow us to do even more. But, as of now, we're using our own funds. We have already significantly increased our presence, our investments without any guarantees or international support, in trade finance, the agribusiness sector, and in the high-tech sector. And we are now exploring other potential investments in the agribusiness sector, which we believe will be critical, and helping the banking sector to provide more financing services," the expert said.

The vice president explained that unlike the World Bank's URTF trust fund to support the public sector, the IFC mobilizes financial support from donors to channel it to the private sector.

"URTF is the trust fund the World Bank Trust established to support the public sector. What we are doing is to mobilize financial support from donors so we can channel it to the private sector. Normally, how it works is, that we can leverage each dollar a donor contributes up to four times, because we can mobilize and bring on board other investors that otherwise wouldn’t have," he said.

"The longer the invasion lasts, the longer we will need to continue focusing on this first phase and the later we will be able to move on to the reconstruction phase. So I think that's the key thing. This won’t affect our commitment or negatively impact investment volumes. Of course, the moment the invasion is over, there will be a much bigger influx of capital into the country. But we will continue supporting the country even if it takes until 2025," he said, commenting on the basic scenario of the program with the IMF assuming the war's winding down in the middle of 2024, and the negative one – at the end of 2025.

The official also expressed hope that at the forthcoming Ukraine Recovery Conference in London at the end of June this year it will be possible to agree on a roadmap for attracting and maximizing the use of funds for the priorities and in the volumes referred to in the World Bank's Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA2).

"We need to redirect financing to those areas and through those institutions that can leverage contributions and multiply their impact now. And I think that the IFC can play a big role," he added.