Ukraine's Economy and Environment Ministry and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank have signed two memoranda to prepare investment projects for the country's recovery, including a pilot initiative covering the Carpathian region with potential financing of up to €20mn, reported Ukraine Business News.

The agreements were signed during the Carpathian Summit and are intended to create a pipeline of investment projects that are sufficiently developed to attract financing, the bank said.

One memorandum establishes cooperation under the Project Preparation Facility (PPF), a mechanism designed to support the preparation and implementation of investment projects. The second focuses specifically on projects in Ukraine's Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zakarpattia and Chernivtsi regions.

The pilot programme envisages a portfolio of projects with total potential financing of up to €20mn. Priority areas include energy, logistics, agricultural processing, value-added manufacturing, tourism, healthcare and municipal infrastructure, Raiffeisen said.

"Ukraine is entering a stage where success depends not on the number of ideas, but on the quality of prepared projects and the ability to secure financing for them quickly," Raiffeisen Bank management board chair Nataliia Gurina said.

The memoranda are part of broader efforts to develop investment projects that can attract funding for Ukraine's reconstruction. The Ukrainian Economy and Environment Ministry said the Carpathian 8 Summit produced an investment portfolio of almost 100 projects worth more than €40bn, including 55 Ukrainian projects.

The ministry said agreements worth more than €1bn in investment, finance and trade were reached during the two-day summit, with almost half involving the energy sector and significant commitments also covering industrial production, transport and logistics.