In Ukraine, a record number of private entrepreneurs have closed

In Ukraine, a record number of private entrepreneurs have closed

Since March 2022, more businesses have been opened as private entrepreneurs in Ukraine per month than have been closed. However, at the end of 2024, the situation changed due to increased tax burdens on entrepreneurs, reports the platform "Opendatabot".

"A record low was registered in January 2025: after nearly a month-long pause due to non-operational registries, 61,455 private entrepreneurs were closed in just a few weeks, while only 21,358 entrepreneurs opened new businesses," the report states.

It is noted that overall, during almost three years of full-scale war, private entrepreneurs have paid 126 billion UAH in taxes. The amount of unified tax paid by entrepreneurs has been increasing every year, except for 2022. Last year, unified tax revenues exceeded the 2021 figures by 1.6 times: 55.1 billion UAH against 34.8 billion UAH.

Overall, since the start of the full-scale war, 763,759 new private entrepreneurs have been opened in Ukraine. Meanwhile, 684,995 entrepreneurs decided to close their businesses over the past 3 years.

According to analysts, entrepreneurs who started their businesses after the start of the full-scale invasion most frequently chose retail as their main area of activity - 28.1%, or 214.2 thousand entrepreneurs. The top three also included IT - 9.1% (69.5 thousand) and wholesale trade - 7.2% (54.6 thousand).

Compared to the period before the start of the full-scale war, there were three times as many new enterprises in postal and courier activities. The number of new private entrepreneurs in the education sector increased by 2.6 times, and in the finance sector by 2.5 times.

Moreover, the full-scale war and mobilization significantly affected the gender distribution of entrepreneurs. In January 2022, every second new private entrepreneurs was opened by women, but now the share of such cases is 61%. There are the most women entrepreneurs among new private entrepreneurs in Khmelnytskyi (60.5%), Kirovograd (60.1%), and Poltava regions (59.4%).

"Women more often start businesses in the service, education, and clothing production sectors, while men dominate in construction, transportation, and logistics," the analysts noted.

The most new private entrepreneurs during the great war were registered in Kyiv - 108,536, in the Dnipropetrovsk region (68,377), and in the Lviv region (60,009).