Page 40 - bne_May magazine 2023_20230503 BRICS

40 I Central Europe bne May 2023
The war in Ukraine isn't over but planning for the reconstruction has already begun. / bne IntelliNews
Central and Southeast European companies eye lucrative Ukraine reconstruction opportunities
bTne IntelliNews
here is no end in sight yet
to the war in Ukraine, but governments and businesses in Central and Southeast Europe
are already eyeing potential lucrative contracts when the war finally does cease. Rebuilding will be on a massive scale and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Databases of companies ready to get involved in the reconstruction have already been drawn up in Poland, which is expected to act as a hub for rebuilding efforts, together with Romania. But officials from even the smallest countries in the region have expressed their readiness to get involved in what should be a construction bonanza.
www.bne.eu
Ukrainian officials are also preparing the ground, perhaps in response to the increasingly vocal speculation from other countries salivating at the thought of the huge reconstruction contracts on offer. Kyiv made it clear on April 6 that the government wants local Ukrainian companies to carry out at least 60% of the work.
The scale of the job can hardly be underestimated, and only gets bigger each day the war drags on. The cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine had risen to $411bn, or 2.6 times the country’s estimated 2022 GDP, by the one-year anniversary of the war on February 24, according to a joint assessment by the government
of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission and the United Nations. And that is just the physical damage. If you add in the lost business, fall in exports and other economic factors, then the total cost of the war gets up to around $1 trillion, according to Natalie Jaresko, the former Minister of Finance. Reconstruction and recovery is expected to stretch over ten years, requiring both public and private funding, although it is still not clear who will pick up the bill.
By sector, the biggest needs are in transport (22%), housing (17%), energy (11%), social protection and livelihoods (10%), explosive hazard management (9%) and agriculture (7%), according