Dozens of Finnish companies grabbed on to government aid to Ukraine
There are currently 30 projects underway or about to be launched in Ukraine. Reconstruction is in full swing. From the beginning of 2023, the focus of the Finnpartnership business partnership programme became Ukraine, and the highest 85 per cent support rate was made available to companies of all sizes whose projects take place in Ukraine. Furthermore, in the beginning of 2024, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio allocated additional funding to the programme amounting to EUR 8 million spread over four years. The additional funding was directed in its entirety directly to Finnish companies.
Despite the state of war, Ukraine has attracted Finnish companies from many different industries. Most of the projects are in the construction, ICT, and metal industries. There are individual projects also in service sectors such as consultancy and security, as well as in the fields of health and food security, manufacturing, energy, environment, and education. For the most part, the projects have progressed well. The first companies are already running metal industry production as well as subcontracting and service business in Ukraine.
The Finnpartnership programme is part of Finland’s official development cooperation and creates decent jobs in the target countries. This brings benefits in both directions. Although acute distress is present in many of the programme’s target countries, such as Ukraine in particular, people have only a small step towards great concern for work and livelihood after the acute crisis. This is where companies come in. Their mission is to create and promote profitable, responsible business that promotes the recovery and strengthening of the market. This creates a continuum for the emergency aid and assistance activities of other actors.
Finnpartnership has already granted a total of EUR 3.2 million in grants for projects in Ukraine since 2022, and new decisions worth EUR 2.5 million are currently being made. The amount of the grant per project is EUR 15,000–400,000.
Since Finnpartnership’s support is available right from the initial studies of the project and most of the projects in Ukraine are at the very beginning or just waiting for their support decision, the employment effects in Ukraine are not yet very large. However, the development looks promising: the three most advanced projects have already recruited and trained a total of more than 30 new employees and more jobs are on the horizon. There are plenty of women employed and new occupations, which is both a goal of the Finnpartnership programme and a necessity in a country at war. This is despite the projects being in traditionally more male-dominated fields. No project has been interrupted at this stage. The project, which aims at long-term business operations in growing markets, can also have a positive impact on the growth prospects of Finnish business.
Finnpartnership’s client companies comment on their projects in Ukraine as follows:
“During the spring of 2024, Peikko established a company in Ukraine, hired three key people for the Kyiv office, started customer deliveries, and this summer signed a contract for a production facility in a city called Bila Tserkva, where the premises will be completed at the turn of the year 2024-2025. Recruitment of production workers will begin in autumn 2024. Finnpartnership’s support has helped us decisively in our project in Ukraine,” says Topi Paananen, Entrepreneur and CEO of Peikko Group Oy.
Polar Partners, Kimmo Kumpulainen: “We applied for Finnpartnership support in summer 2023 to investigate the market situation in Ukraine and identify partners, because during his visit to Finland on 8 April 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy requested help specifically for the development of education. With Finnpartnership’s support, we have now visited Ukraine four times, and we have mapped dozens of local business partners and networked with several public bodies and third sector operators. After a year of research and with the help of suitable local and Finnish partners, we found two suitable cities with which we signed agreements on the development of pilot schools. These pilot projects will serve as references for future school reconstruction and development projects, currently estimated at around EUR 40 billion, over the next 15 years.”
More info:
8.8 – 15.8. (9-15h)
Birgit Nevala (Finnpartnership-programme director)
birgit.nevala@finnpartnership.fi
+358 (0)44 357 0811
Oskar Kass (Team Leader, Private Sector Cooperation; Unit for Development Finance and Private Sector Cooperation in the Department for Development Policy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Teamledare, Samarbete med den privata sektorn; Utrikesministeriets utvecklingspolitiska avdelning)
+358 (0)50 471 2099
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