From energy to agriculture: Ukraine's $27 billion investment roadmap at Berlin conference

The Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 was held in Berlin on June 11-12.

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This was the third such conference since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. In July 2022, in the Swiss city of Lugano, Ukraine proposed a Marshall Plan to the world, according to which Western countries would invest $750 billion in Ukraine.

A year later, in June 2023, a similar event took place in London. It was expected that the Deputy Head of the President's Office, Rostyslav Shurma, would propose an energy transformation plan for Ukraine with an investment potential of $400 billion. Officially, the need for recovery investments was estimated at less than $50 billion.

This year, the Ukrainian side further reduced the desired funding amount, limiting it to a need of $27 billion. At the same time, the conference's website presented 95 investment projects in 9 economic sectors with detailed descriptions, business models, and investment payback periods. Private companies were listed as the implementers of most of these projects.

LIGA.net analyzed the investment projects proposed by Ukraine and published a brief overview.

Infrastructure without a manager

The largest amount of funds was expected to be attracted for projects of the Ministry for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine (Ministry of Infrastructure). In total, the ministry has 15 projects with a total value of $11.5 billion, expecting to receive $10.8 billion from donors.

The largest of these are the construction of passive protection of critical energy infrastructure for $2.84 billion, the reconstruction of 500 km of state roads M06, M10, M11, known as the "Western route" for $1.12 billion, and compensation to Ukrainian citizens for housing destroyed and damaged by Russians for $2.07 billion.

Among other interesting projects are the improvement of logistics approaches to Odesa ports for $700 million, repair of damaged and construction of new apartment buildings for approximately the same amount.

There are also plans to solve the water supply problem in Mykolaiv for $436 million and reconstruct 15 checkpoints on the western border for $352 million. There are projects to build a bridge across the Dnieper in Kremenchuk for $326 million and across the Dniester to connect with Moldova for $190 million.

However, the largest potential manager of donor funds still has no leader. As known, on May 9, the previous head of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Oleksandr Kubrakov, was dismissed. A new head was not appointed for a month. Moreover, on June 10, just before the Conference, Mustafa Nayyem, head of the State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development, resigned amidst a scandal. Thus, the recovery conference lost the people who were supposed to implement this recovery.

In addition to the Ministry of Infrastructure, the list includes 5 projects of Ukrzaliznytsia [Ukrainian state railways - ed.] with a total funding need of $740 million. Among its projects are the construction and reconstruction of railway tracks in the west of Ukraine, and the modernization of 50 freight locomotives.

Energy sector: everything is going green

The cost of projects in the energy sector, taking into account its systematic destruction by Russian aggressors, is the highest among the proposed projects.

Interestingly, the Ukrainian delegation presented a $1.6 billion project to donors in Berlin to build two units at the Rivne NPP. Along with these two, the NPP operator NNEGC Energoatom plans to build 8 NPP power units.

It is also planned to build a power unit each at two thermal power plants in Kyiv worth $1.2 billion. State-owned Ukrhydroenergo would like to receive over $2 billion for the construction of the Dniester HPP and Kaniv PSPP, as well as energy storage systems at its facilities.

In the private sector, many green generation operators are among the project implementers. DTEK RES has six projects. Among them are wind and solar power plants with a total capacity of 1.9 GW. DTEK would like to receive $1.62 billion in funding from partners for this. Kharkiv CHP-5 needs $600 million to replace destroyed capacities.

The Turkish company GURIS wants to build wind and solar power plants with funding of $640 million. The Windpark West-R of Ternopil businessman Volodymyr Kryshtalovsky expects $460 million for the construction of two wind farms with a capacity of 300 MW.

A separate track in the energy sector is hydrogen transformation. UDP Renewables of Serhiy Yevtushenko and Andriy Ivanov plans to build a hydrogen production plant for 1.2 billion with a funding need of $840 million. The company Hydrogen of Ukraine of Zaporizhzhia businessman Oleksandr Repkin submitted two projects for creating a Hydrogen Valley and hydrogen production with a total funding of $700 million.

Zakhidnadraservis of Lviv businessman Zynoviy Kozytsky expects $256 million for the construction of an electrolysis plant for hydrogen production.

Notably, thermal coal generation, primarily managed by state-owned Centrenergo and DTEK Energy owned by Rinat Akhmetov, was the hardest hit by Russian missile strikes. Its restoration costs the least per unit of capacity. But not a single such project is presented in the list.

Agriculture, pharmacy and logistics

Among the conditionally expensive projects are plans to build two glass factories. EFI Group of Ihor Liski plans to implement this with external funding of $156 million out of 250 total, and Eco-Glass of Oleksandr Zubenko for $240 million. The company plans to attract the entire amount from Western partners.

The pharmaceutical company Darnytsia of Glib Zagoriy expects $360 million for the construction of a complex for the production of RNA vaccines and a new pharmaceutical plant. Zhytomyr City Council is seeking $95 million to build a new multi-profile hospital in the city.

MHP, led by Yuriy Kosyuk, announced three projects: an extraction plant for rapeseed and soybean processing, a milk production and processing complex, and a 20 MW sunflower husk power plant. The total cost is $85 million, of which external financing is $67 million. Several projects to build cargo terminals in seaports have also been presented. The largest among them is from the company Techagro for $105 million, which belongs to the family of Mykola Zlochevsky. There are also applications for the construction of container transshipment complexes and refrigeration complexes for processing Ukrainian agricultural products.