Mining billionaire pledges $800m for Ukraine reconstruction
Australia’s richest man will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a global fund for Ukraine intended to raise billions to rebuild the warravaged nation’s economy.
Andrew ‘‘Twiggy’’ Forrest, a mining billionaire, said he would personally invest US$494 million (NZ$806 million) into a project that aims to raise US$100 billion and has been described as Ukraine’s Marshall Plan in a nod to the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.
‘‘I don’t want to wait for the last bullet to be fired. I want people to know now that Ukraine will enter into a golden era. It will be the highest-growth economy in Europe without any doubt,’’ Forrest said.
The fund, which has been negotiated in Kyiv, Washington, Canberra and London for nine months, will be led by BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, under a deal announced by Forrest and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine.
Forrest, who has a reported net worth of US$12 billion, made his fortune largely by mining and exporting Western Australia’s iron ore to Chinese steelmakers. He will make his contribution into the Ukraine Green Growth Initiative, as the fund will be known, from his private family investment company.
The fund’s mandate is to rebuild Ukraine’s shattered energy and communications infrastructure with the latest sustainable and digital technology. Forrest said this would help realise ‘‘a golden vision’’ for postwar Ukraine as ‘‘the fastestgrowth economy in Europe, if not the world’’.
Although it launched yesterday, the initiative’s funds will not be released until Russia is judged to have pulled back from its invasion and permanent reconstruction can begin. Russia’s continuing missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy systems have worsened the war’s crippling impact on the country’s economy, which has shrunk by a third since the war began. Ukraine’s government has said the cost of repairing the damage would exceed US$750 billion.
Zelenskyy said rather than simply ‘‘replace Communist-era rubbish Russian infrastructure’’ after the war’s destruction, the fund would allow his government to ‘‘leapfrog to the latest technology’’.
Forrest, 60, is also an environmentalist who in 2019 completed his PhD in marine science.