Zelensky welcomes Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s $744m investment to help rebuild Ukraine economy
Australian billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest have made a huge contribution to supercharge Ukraine’s post-war recovery via green digital technology.
One of Australia’s richest families, Andrew and Nicola Forrest, have invested a headline-grabbing US$500m ($744.5m) as seed funding of a multibillion-dollar fund to rebuild Ukraine in just one generation with green digital technology.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the Ukraine Green Growth Initiative on Thursday at the New Economy Forum in Singapore, saying “Andrew and I have agreed we will not replace communist-era rubbish Russian infrastructure, instead we will leapfrog to the latest technology. We will take advantage of the fact that what the Russians have destroyed can readily be replaced with the latest, most modern, green and digital infrastructure”.
Dr Forrest, who chairs Fortescue Mining Group and the green hydrogen company, Fortescue Future Industries, will invest the half a billion dollars through his and his wife’s private investment company, Tattarang, and predicts that rebuilding Ukraine will be the “ fastest growth economy for a decade or so at least in Europe and for several years in the world”.
Earlier this year, Dr Forrest famously described investment in Russia as “blood money’’ and since then he has privately helped fund the first humanitarian grain shipment out of Ukraine in August, and helped Ukrainian farmers with grain storage facilities through his philanthropic organisation Minderoo Foundation.
He has been quietly driving in and out of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv throughout the eight months of the war meeting with Ukraine’s leadership and intensifying those visits in recent months. Around June, he also met with Blackrock’s Larry Fink in New York City, which helped consolidate the fund’s idea.
Dr Forrest told The Australian the Ukraine green growth initiative was expected to swell to at least $148.9bn and that it would be ready to go from the moment Ukraine was able to begin rebuilding after Russia’s war ends.
“I feel really confident that there’ll be a bunch of various institutions and people who have had any appreciation of the economic miracles after World War II in Germany, or in South Korea. They know that they do not have a downtrodden population here, they have not suffered for years, nor have had a dreadful world war and tyranny up to that point. They’ve had a free economy, they have suffered an invasion. They’re proud, intelligent, highly energised, patriotic people who are very well educated. If there is a scenario where the Marshall Plan could massively accelerate economic growth, it is this.
“But this will not lock in for years after the cessation of hostilities, as happened in World War II, this will lock in on the first day of the cessation of hostilities and seek immediately to rebuild the primary infrastructure, which the Russians are hellbent on destroying. Our discussions with the president’s office is that yes, you can do this.’’
Mr Zelensky said the project was particularly timely because of Russia’s terror on Ukraine civil infrastructure.
“The whole world can see how Russia, unable to win on the battlefield, terrorises civil infrastructure. The price of reconstruction is growing with each new strike. One day the aggressor will pay for everything in full, but our people cannot wait for electricity and heat for months,” Mr Zelensky said.
“We need to restore Ukraine now. That is why this project is so timely. I thank its initiators: Andrew Forrest and Larry Fink of Blackrock for their commitment and strong signal to the global business community.
“Together we will not only rebuild Ukraine, protecting people’s lives, but also make it an attractive place for global business.”
The investment fund will focus on primary infrastructure such as energy and communications to build a digital green grid, so Ukraine can become a model for the world as a leading digital green economy.
Dr Forrest added: “This will be a sovereign fund for professional investors for local and global institutions. This will be an opportunity to do whatever investors turn to in Australia but across the world look for and that’s to make a satisfactory return. To be able to know that your investments are doing real good in the world and to know that the people of Ukraine will also live well because you live well.”
Dr Forrest has briefed US President Joe Biden, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, and the international business community including UN Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg, Blackrock chairman and president, Mr Fink, and their teams about the project.
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