Some 85% of 355 business representatives polled by Gradus Research with the support of the Kiev School of Economics (KSE) as part of their study partially or completely suspended the work of their companies due to the war.
“The war has made significant changes in the work of Ukrainian business: about 85% of the business stopped working in partial operation or even stopped work altogether, among which 1% stopped their activities and do not plan to resume, and 35% suspended it, waiting for better times,” the authors of the study said. release on the CSE website.
At the same time, sectoral transformation as one of the ways to save a business from closure turned out to be relevant for 37% of the enterprises that took part in the study – in 21% of cases, a business is in the process of sectoral transformation. At the same time, 16% of respondents have completely or partially transformed, and the same number can potentially join this process.
“The most popular business areas since the beginning of the war have been the retail trade in food and non-food products – in total, up to 24% of the businesses that took part in the study account for these two areas,” the release says.
According to Gradus, 86% of businesses are operating with less workload than before the war, but there are those whose workload has even increased.
“As the difficulties that arise in organizing the work of a business, half of the audience cites a lack of orders. Up to a third of respondents (29%) complain about problems with logistics,” the researchers said.
With regard to government assistance, 37% of respondents, according to the results of the study, are counting on tax holidays.
Other expectations include assistance with organizing logistics, access to cheaper finance, product promotion and keeping key employees from going abroad, military service.
The authors of the study note that the difficult times of business significantly affect the financial support of employees and suppliers – 3-5% of businesses pay relatively large payments, 14-19% make payments at the pre-war level. Other businesses have either reduced the share of payments or stopped altogether – 39% do not pay wages, and 29% do not pay suppliers.
The report clarifies that the survey was conducted by the method of self-completion of the questionnaire in a mobile application in cities with a population of more than 50 thousand people, the sample was 355 respondents.