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During the second Ukraine Recovery Conference, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union promised this Wednesday, June 21, to provide additional aid to rebuild the country and close the enormous fiscal gap that the war has brought.
Ukraine needs more than 6 billion dollars in just 12 months to tackle what it says is the biggest reconstruction project in Europe since World War II. This was stated by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in London, which hosts Western leaders on Wednesday.
“We have set ourselves an ambitious goal of securing commitments for this amount as a result of this conference,” the official said. The United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have already announced their contributions.
After nearly 16 months of war that destroyed homes, hospitals and other critical infrastructure, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak opened the conference with a call for businesses and governments to do more to help rebuild the invaded country.
Sunak revealed that his support package includes loan guarantees of $3 billion over three years. London will also commit up to 250 million pounds ($318 million) to encourage British international investment in Ukraine.
First important news from the #URC2023 conference in London. @RishiSunak Announced a new $3 billion ?? financial support package for Ukraine. @vonderleyen proposed a new €50 billion ?? Facility to support the reconstruction of ??. @SecBlinken announced a new $1.3 billion ?? aid…
— Volodimir Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) June 21, 2023
There will also be an additional £240m of aid to Ukraine this year for humanitarian aid, disaster relief kits, demining and energy projects.
The European Union had already announced that it would provide some 50 billion euros ($54.6 billion) in aid for the 2024-2027 period, of which 17 billion euros would come in grants and the rest in the form of low-interest loans.
“Until 2027, Ukraine’s tax gap is about 60 billion euros. The needs for a rapid recovery are also about 50,000 million euros. That makes a total of 110,000 million euros that are not covered. Therefore, I proposed to the Member States to cover 45 percent of this gap,” said the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
For his part, the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, promised 1,300 million dollars of additional aid, of which 520 million dollars will be to recondition the energy network, 657 million dollars to modernize border crossings, ports , railway lines and other critical infrastructure, and the remainder to digitize customs and other systems, among others.
With Reuters and EFE
