World Bank approves $489 million in immediate aid to Ukraine
The World Bank announced that its board of directors agreed Monday to provide immediate additional assistance to Ukraine called "Ukraine Economic Emergency Recovery Financing" or "Free Ukraine", under which Kyiv will immediately receive an amount of 489 million dollars.
The International Financial Corporation, headquartered in Washington, announced on the first of this March that it was preparing to provide emergency financial assistance to Ukraine worth three billion dollars, including 350 million dollars that could be released immediately.
On Monday, the World Bank said in a statement that its board of directors approved this emergency assistance and raised the amount that Kiev can benefit from immediately from 350 million dollars to 489 million dollars.
The statement indicated that the assistance "approved by the Council is divided into a supplementary loan of $350 million and guarantees of $139 million."
According to the statement, the supplementary loan, which will be released immediately, "will help the government provide basic services to Ukrainians, including salaries for hospital workers, pensions for the elderly and social programs for vulnerable groups."
The bank indicated in its statement that in addition to this loan, its board of directors agreed to grant Ukraine $134 million in financing and $100 million in parallel financing.
This brings the total amount of emergency assistance approved by the Bank to Ukraine to $723 million.
In its statement, the bank stated that the Netherlands and Sweden contributed $89 million to the first and $50 million to the second.
The World Bank also noted that it has also established a “Multi-Donor Trust Fund, the resources of which will be disbursed on an urgent basis, to facilitate the channeling of grant resources from donors to Ukraine, to which the United Kingdom, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland have contributed with a total value of $134 million.”
The Bank appealed to the rest of the donor countries to contribute to this trust fund.
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