CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE FUND SERHII KOMNATNYI PARTICIPATED IN UKRAINIAN-GERMAN GOVERNMENT TALKS
Today, November 30, 2021, negotiations in the framework of cooperation for development between the Governments of Ukraine and Germany took place in Kyiv. On the Ukrainian side, the talks were attended by the Minister of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Chernyshov, Deputy Ministers Natalia Kozlovska and Vyacheslav Negoda and the Chairman of the Board of the Fund Serhii Komnatnyi.
The talks were opened by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Maria Flaxbart and German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldguzen.
In his speech at the signing of the Credit and Grant Agreement between the Government of Ukraine, KfW Credit Institution, Zhytomyr and Zaporizhia City Councils on the implementation of the KfW project "Energy Efficiency in Communities" Oleksiy Chernyshov thanked German partners for effective cooperation, including in creating housing conditions for internally displaced persons and maintaining the energy independence of our state.
Natalia Kozlovska and Serhii Komnatnyi gave speeches within the framework of the Sectoral Political Dialogue "Prospects for the Development of the Eastern Regions of Ukraine, the Current State and Situation of Internally Displaced Persons".
The Chairman of the Board of the State Fund thanked the Government of Germany and the team of the KFW Development Bank for their cooperation in the implementation of the Housing for Internally Displaced Persons Project in Ukraine.
The project is already showing excellent results, it started on May 17 this year, when the State Fund began accepting applications for a loan from internally displaced persons, said Serhii Komnatnyi.
There are currently 21,791 IDP families in the register of candidates. The first random selection of program participants took place on July 21. To date, 4 random selections have been conducted, 700 citizens have been randomly selected who have received the right to apply for a housing loan at 3% per annum. Another random selection is planned for the end of 2021, other stages of random selection will take place in 2022.
206 loans have already been issued within the framework of the Project, 103 packages of documents of the winning candidates are being processed. Given the number of applications for the intention to obtain credit and people who watch the broadcast of the selection, we can say that there is a great interest of internally displaced persons to participate in the Project, said Serhii Komnatnyi. Of EUR 25.5 million in grant funds, EUR 9 million has already been received for IDP lending. An application for another EUR 9.5 million has been prepared for the KfW Development Bank, the rest of the grant funds will be used in 2022.
The Chairman of the Fund requested the Government of Germany and KfW to support the Project in the future, including by the means of increasing its funding.
As a result of the talks, a Protocol was signed, in which the parties stressed their readiness to continue their efforts for the sustainable development of Ukraine. Ukrainian-German cooperation will continue in the form of Technical and Financial Cooperation.
In particular, the Protocol states that for the State Fund, additional funding is appropriate for the existing IDP Soft Lending Project for the purchase of housing.