Intuitively, it seems that the largest communities have equal opportunities. Our analysis showed that this is not the case. The EU-LEAP team assessed the financial capacity and institutional conditions of Ukraine's five largest cities — Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kharkiv — with regard to potential municipal bond issuance.

An even more telling fact: almost 90% of the total issuance volume was accounted for by just three cities — Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv. As part of the project "Development of the Municipal Bond Market in Ukraine: Analysis of Regulation, Practice, and Potential for Community Recovery," the EU-LEAP team has prepared a study on the practice of local loan bond issuance in Ukraine over the period 1995–2021.

A common assumption is that the problem lies in a lack of money. In fact, one of the main reasons is much more complex: even a financially capable community must go through a multi-level approval procedure, confirm its borrowing capacity, and demonstrate the ability to service the debt throughout the entire term of the loan.

Municipal bonds can become one of the financial instruments for the recovery and development of territorial communities. They allow local self-government bodies to raise funds on the capital market for the implementation of infrastructure, social, and other projects of local significance.