EBRD Prioritizes Infrastructure and Energy Security for Planned €1.5 Billion 2025 Investment in Ukraine

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) plans to invest €1.5 billion ($1.54 billion) in Ukraine in 2025, Arvid Tuerkner, the EBRD’s managing director for Ukraine and Moldova, told Bloomberg in a zoom interview.

“Planning is a difficult thing in Ukraine” but “more is possible if we find the right deals,” he said.

Tuerkner added that EBRD’s four key investment sectors are infrastructure, energy security, private sector and resilience in food security.

The priorities are the same as EBRD’s total €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) investments in Ukraine in 2024, according to a press release previously received by Kyiv Post via email.

EBRD provided loans to Ukrainian state-run companies, including the railways, with more than 50% of its investments going into private business last year, Tuerkner told Bloomberg.

The share will stay roughly the same in 2025 as the bank sees a “good agriculture sector pipeline,” which is central to Ukraine’s economy, he said.

Portfolio risk sharing has become the bestseller instrument for the EBRD inside Ukraine. Previously it was aimed at the agricultural sector and small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), but after Russia’s strikes on energy facilities.

Kyiv Post previously wrote about the launch of a €700 million portfolio risk-sharing program with Ukrainian banks – the Energy Security Support Facility.

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The EBRD’s program will support Ukrainian partner financial banks in on-lending to both households and SMEs. They will get an opportunity to buy capacity to generate electricity, including solar panels and generators, Francis Malige, the Managing Director and Head of the Financial Institutions Group at the EBRD, told Kyiv Post.

Kyiv Post also wrote that EBRD and leading professional services firm Aon launched a new bank guarantee designed to reinsurance capacity to private-sector insurers in Ukraine. The plan should cover internal domestic cargo, motor vehicle damage and railway rolling stock.

Tuerkner told Bloomberg Ukraine should make progress with anti-corruption efforts and judicial reform, as well as advance in corporate governance reform. The latter is important for Ukraine’s state companies to have enough capacity to be involved in reconstruction.