REUTERS
The project is to be completed in 2023-2024.
The French government is to provide a soft loan worth EUR 64 million for Ukraine to build a drinking water supply station in Mariupol, Donetsk region.
This was announced by France's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine Etienne de Poncins during an online press conference on July 13, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
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"By implementing this project, we are pleased to breathe new life into the city of Mariupol, which, as we know, has suffered from the ongoing conflict in the east of Ukraine," he said.
The diplomat noted that the project was founded in January 2019 and since then all financial and administrative procedures had been handled to launch it.
"All engineering work will be started within the next few weeks. Our political goal – I do not hide this – is to do everything necessary for the new drinking water station to be commissioned in Mariupol in 2023 or 2024 the latest," the ambassador said.
The project involves the construction of a plant for the production of drinking water using French technology and the modernization of the associated infrastructure of Mariupol.
Separately, the ambassador said, the possibility of implementing a similar project to build a drinking water supply station in the north of Donbas, namely in Luhansk region, in three or four years is being considered.
In turn, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksiy Reznikov said that the soft loan worth EUR 64 million would be provided at a rate of 0.08% for 30 years with a ten-year grace period.
"With these funds, a filter station, water intakes will be built in Mariupol and the necessary studies will be carried out exactly where and how to take and provide drinking water for the city with almost half a million residents," he said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers in January 2020 signed an agreement with the French government on a EUR 64 million project to provide drinking water to Mariupol.