IFC to help municipalities with housing recovery – Vice President

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group has refocused a EUR50 million project: if initially it focused on energy efficiency, the refocus allows the funds to be used to help families rebuild destroyed homes, said IFC Vice President for Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean Alfonso Garcia Mora.

"There is an existing project of EUR 50 million that we have reshaped. The project’s focus originally was on energy efficiency, but a reorientation allows us to use these funds to help families reconstruct or rehabilitate houses that have been destroyed. The focus is not on supporting new residential construction but on funding the reconstruction of damaged dwellings," he said.

"We are in discussions with Lviv to continue renovating municipal buildings. They are good discussions. I think that this will probably be one of the entry points that we will explore … When it comes to working with municipalities, we lend without a sovereign guarantee, which is very useful, especially in the case of Ukraine and its lack of fiscal space. However, the guarantees that international donors can provide will be needed.

"We need to know the purpose of our work in a city. To invest in something concrete, we will need to define the objective of the investment and then decide if it makes sense or not, because you don't want to start a project today if it is at risk of being destroyed tomorrow. But I believe that there will be a lot of potential opportunities and needs for reconstruction at the municipal level," the official added.

Source: www.en.interfax.com.ua