As a result of USAID suspending funding for a huge number of donor projects in Ukraine, the budget for digitalization in the Ukrainian govtech sector lost up to half of its funds.
As a result of USAID suspending funding for a huge number of donor projects in Ukraine, the budget for digitalization in the Ukrainian govtech sector lost up to half of its funds.
This was stated by Roman Lansky, CEO of the govtech company Strimco, in an interview with dev.ua.
«When it comes to development, state money from the entire govtech palette is 10–20%, and donors are, roughly speaking, 80–90% of everything. It is difficult to say how many percent of donor aid was financed specifically by USAID, but according to my estimates, it is 40–45%. The structure of these funds is very uneven and it is difficult to calculate, but it turns out that almost half of the budget for „digital“ was cut,» Lansky explained.
At the same time, answering the question of whether Strimco itself was affected by the suspension of USAID project funding, Lansky noted that this did not have a critical impact, since USAID projects account for about 20% of Strimco’s portfolio.
«The loss of several projects can be endured. We are lucky that we thought about it in advance and diversified. We are not dependent on one counterparty or one donor. In this regard, we „put our eggs in different baskets“. But there are companies that have suffered greatly from this,» he said.
The Strimco CEO added that the DTA («Digital Transformation Support») project had just started and had a five-year budget of $150 million, and that USAID also had a cybersecurity project with an even larger budget.
Nevertheless, according to Roman Lansky, European funding for donor projects on digitalization in Ukraine may, on the contrary, grow to replace US funding.
«European countries are interested in influencing the development of Ukraine, and in the field of digitalization this influence is especially noticeable. Financing digital reforms is part of a broader strategy for Ukraine’s integration into the European space… Now it seems that from a political point of view, Europe is not going to distance itself from Ukraine in any way. On the contrary, it seems that they are beginning to realize that they need to live without the States,» Lansky believes.
Strimco CEO, comparing European budgets for govtech with Ukrainian ones, stated that the amounts of funds allocated to Ukraine do not look large.
«In fact, for them it’s a pittance. Because if you look at European budgets with govtech, we are like a children’s sandbox against their background. And there is a sand pit that is dug by serious tractors,» Roman Lansky drew analogies.
As we wrote, in a recent interview with dev.ua, Lansky also spoke about cooperation with the Ministry of Defense and other ministries, outdated IT standards that they still cannot abandon, and shared his top list of the greatest successes and failures of digitalization.
