The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will enable Ukrainian banks to provide up to 900 million euros ($1.05 billion) in new loans by sharing credit risks, the EBRD announced in a press release on July 7.
The loans will target companies in agribusiness, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, transport and logistics, as well as energy security projects.
The mechanism will be announced at the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC) in Rome on July 10-11. This represents the largest risk-sharing facility implemented in Ukraine since the war began, according to the EBRD's press release.
Due to destructive Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the EBRD will also focus on supporting distributed generation and renewable energy projects.
Russian forces have damaged most of Ukraine's thermal power plants and about 30% of power stations, disrupting nearly two-thirds of the country's total electricity generation, the bank says.
The EU, together with other EBRD donors, has developed plans to de-risk renewable energy investments to attract more private capital, which they will announce at the URC.
Nearly one-third of EBRD's wartime financing to Ukraine — 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) — has gone to the energy sector. This includes support for state-owned electricity transmission and gas companies, as well as financing for hydropower and small-scale distributed generation.
In a pre-URC press release, the EBRD also expressed interest in supporting the development of a natural graphite deposit in Ukraine following the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement. Graphite is a strategic material used in batteries and defense applications.
The bank will launch the second phase of digitizing Ukraine's paper-based geological data archive to make information about mineral deposits more accessible, the EBRD reports.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the EBRD has invested over 7.2 billion euros ($8.4 billion) in Ukraine's economy.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
(Updated: )
