Senior Ukrainian officials this week appealed for foreign funding and advice to plug a vast infrastructure gap as the host country struggles to prepare for the Euro 2012 Football Championships.
“Euro 2012 is too important and too big a project to risk losing,” Oksana Sliusarenko deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential secretariat, told investors in Kiev yesterday.
“We don’t have experience working with such time constraints but we would welcome alliances with investors from other countries who can step in on transport and infrastructure.”
The plea echoes that of Ukraine Football Association president Grigory Surkis who last month slammed the government delays and infighting that resulted in squandering precious months after Ukraine and Poland won the right to host the tournament.
Ukraine government estimates put the overall infrastructure investment needed for Euro 2012 in Ukraine at $25 billion, of which $20 billion is expected to come from the private sector. In addition to stadium construction, investment is also needed in transport, tourism and municipalities.
Andrii Sadovyi, mayor of Lviv, said the municipality would issue municipal bonds to help fund infrastructure projects. Loans to infrastructure projects would be guaranteed by the municipalities, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.
However, a scathing Uefa report released in January found both countries woefully underprepared, and ordered Poland and Ukraine to get their houses in order by July. But Uefa president Michel Platini has admitted “there is no plan B” should the host countries fail to come up with the goods.
Uefa’s main concern is whether hotels and transportation will be adequate to host the hundreds of thousands of fans who will descend on the two countries for the championship, but this week, Uefa officials will tour Ukraine’s stadiums to check on their progress.
The EBRD’s Ukraine representative Jean-Patrick Marquet outlined the manifold challenges facing the Euro 2012 project, technical, institutional and financial.
Utility reform is overdue, Marquet said. “Municipality utilities need to be independent, and not an arm of the municipality,” he said. “Municipal finance requires reform.”
Marquet yesterday put a brave face on the preparations. “There is a lot of activity going on in cities involved in Euro 2012,” he said. Many projects are underway and many more are being undertaken. There are challenges, and things that must be improved, but I am optimistic that the country will be ready and it will succeed.”
“We’re not thinking of moving [the games] elsewhere,” said Uefa spokesman Yann Le Gaillard. “We have to do it [in Ukraine], but in order to do that, the efforts have to increase.”
“We are open for co-operation,” Sliusarenko said. “There is a team that is very much keen to see that Euro 2012 is a success. The President has called it a national priority, a priority that should not become a source of inter-governmental conflict.”