Ukrainian finance minister reinstated as co-chair of Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform for Ukraine

MOSCOW. Dec 21 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has decided to reinstate Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko to the post of co-chair of the Steering Committee of the Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform for Ukraine (Financial Rammstein), Ukrainian media said.

It has been done to "put greater focus on external financing for budget needs," Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Alexander Kubrakov said on social media. Kubrakov served as Ukraine's co-chair of the platform at three of its seven meetings - in June, September and December.

Key topics on the agenda of the platform's last, seventh meeting were macrofinancial assistance, expanding the platform and creating conditions for raising private capital to finance Ukraine's recovery, he said.

"The focus is on projects that will ensure our resilience [...] will create conditions for economic recovery and for Ukrainians' return back home," Ukrainian media outlets quoted Kubrakov as saying in a social media post.

The most intensive work takes place between the platform's meetings, involving more than 100 experts and officials from G7 countries and international financial institutions, he said.

Expert support became available to the platform due to projects of the United States Agency for International Development, the European Union and the United Nations Development Program, Deloitte and Ernst & Young LLP experts, Kubrakov said, also thanking former Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko, who has agreed to become Kubrakov's advisor at the Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform for Ukraine.

As reported, Marchenko, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Pyle and the European Commission's Budget Department Director-General Gert Jan Koopman became the co-chairs of the Steering Committee of the Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform for Ukraine, which held its first meeting in late January 2023.

The coordination platform has its own secretariat with two offices in Brussels and in Kiev. The head of the secretariat is the European Commission's Anna Jarosz-Friis. Her deputy is Yakaterina Yelishiyeva from Ukraine's Finance Ministry.