Just over a month ago I was in Berlin at the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC), the most important global event focused on supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression and its recovery after victory. World leaders trip over themselves to host the URC and every year, where top politicians line up to promise support for Ukraine.

Breakout sessions are stuffed with government representatives in panel discussions competing amongst themselves by promising millions in new funding. Another $40 million for de-mining from Italy, $30 million for small business recovery from the US, on and on they go.

There’s no shortage of money being pledged to Ukraine in its battle for survival, but when it comes to actually spending the funds, everything goes sideways.

Will you take a cheque?

URC rooms were crowded with country DFI representatives. DFI stands for Development Finance Institution, and these are nations’ foreign aid and development departments. In Canada it’s Global Affairs, in the U.S. it’s USAID, and in the U.K. it’s the FCDO. All G20 nations have DFIs and all their staffs attended the URC. 

Over coffee, lunch or a beer, every DFI representative I spoke with was bemoaning the fact that they had lots of money to spend, but what they lacked was investable projects. To which I replied, “Huh?  A lack of investable projects? I know many people working on very cool projects supporting Ukraine and most of them are begging for cash. Heck, my project, the Peace Coalition, is very investable, and I’d love to help you spend some of your money”. “No, you don’t understand, it’s not the lack of projects that’s the problem, it’s a lack of procurement support in my own government.”  To which I responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

It turns out that spending all the promised money is a very big problem and it’s only growing.

Empty Promises

Government procurement in countries with DFI programmes is heavily controlled to promote transparency and prevent corruption or misuse of funds. If you live in a nation where politicians are chosen in fair elections, the last thing your government wants is a media storm about taxpayers paying for a bridge to nowhere or a trade mission to Dubai that includes private jets, first class hotels & restaurants plus gold watches.

Dodgy expense reports and suspicious construction projects are easy to prevent by making the procurement process so incredibly onerous that only the brave, the honest, or the stupid would even try. Each DFI has a different set of requirements and just completing the application can take weeks of re-formatting and linguistic heroics to ensure your proposal to rebuild a school is done in a green, sustainable, gender-neutral, holistic and transparent manner. Once your application is submitted in English, French, German, Danish or whatever the language, it can take 12 to 18 months to get a response, and often that response is NO because you forgot to dot an i or cross a t.

Red Tape

I am not kidding folks, governments that allocate millions to rebuild schools, de-mine farmers’ fields or bring a children’s cardiac and cancer hospital back into service can’t actually spend the money, because their procurement bureaucracy has forgotten how to accelerate and increase efficiency during wartime. I guarantee that timely spending was not Winston Churchill’s problem in WWII.

Ukraine appreciates and needs all the help it can get to beat the Russians and rebuild once this war is over. I can assure you the Ukraine’s government team at the URC was very grateful. But under the surface there was palpable tension as more promises were made on top of last year’s promises that are still not yet fulfilled.

The West cannot forget the lessons learned in WWII when allied nations supported each other with immediate deliveries of airplanes, tanks, ships and men to defend our share values of peace and justice for all. Ukraine is simply asking her allies to deliver the money and equipment promised so Ukrainians can win this war that none of us seem to be prepared to fight.

Slava Ukraini!  Heroaim Slava!