The Ukraine Recovery Conference, held in Rome on July 10-11, brought together government officials, international organizations, and financial institutions to strategize about ways to support the war-torn country.
One of the attendees was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, fresh from a visit to Pope Leo XIV at Castel Gandolfo on Wednesday.
Another was Anna Bjerde, Managing Director of Operations at the World Bank, who spoke to Vatican News.
Q: More than three years have passed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. What have been the World Bank’s main contributions so far to the reconstruction of the country?
Anna Bjerde: The World Bank Group, like so many others, has really stepped up to make sure that we could support Ukraine during this very difficult time, providing significant amounts of financing, both our own and also mobilizing resources from Ukraine's main development partners by setting up various platforms and trust funds and ways of channeling funds to Ukraine.
Our focus has been threefold. One focus is to help the government provide essential services like paying for teachers, paying for medical support, paying for a social safety net.
The second has been to support the quick recovery and repair of infrastructure that's being damaged on an ongoing basis, particularly in areas like energy and housing. And the third area has been to start planning for tomorrow.
So that's involved quite a bit of diagnostics and economic modeling to see what might be areas of major growth. In total, we’ve mobilized about $81 billion for Ukraine, both public and private.
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