Ukrainian enterprises have worsened production indicators and their plans for the long term have slightly deteriorated, but in January 87.8% of respondents expected that the end of the war would improve business, these are the results of a monthly survey of enterprises by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Advice (IEI).
“This proves that the war is the main factor that affects businesses, although they have adapted,” IEI quoted IEI executive director Oksana Kuzyakiv in a statement.
It is noted that the second factor that can help business to develop is the stability or even reduction of taxes (47%). “And if we add to them 21.7% of those who want taxes at least not to increase, we see that this is such a reaction of business to the increase in taxes, in particular military levy on employees and FLP,” – said Oksana Kuzyakiv.
On the third place of “wishes” is the reservation of workers (23.9%). Although fewer businesses expect the solution to this issue than during the previous survey in August (31.9%). Among the leaders of expectations are deregulation and affordable credit.
At the same time, de-occupation of Ukraine’s territories is almost not mentioned by businesses (14.7%) as a factor that can improve their performance.
The Business Activity Recovery Index (BARI) deteriorated significantly in January to 0.09 from 0.16 in December. The IED believes that this decline occurred in all four business groups, including large companies that were still showing optimism back in December.
The level of business uncertainty did not change significantly over the month. At the same time, the majority of businesses – 81.5% – do not expect significant changes in their activities in the 2-year perspective.
The utilization of production capacities increased in January. The share of enterprises operating at almost full capacity (from 75% to 99%) increased from 42% in December to 54% in January. This was mainly due to a decrease in the share of those operating at 50-74% of capacity – from 26% to 17%.
It is noted that production activity has slightly deteriorated: the share of entrepreneurs who increased the volume of production decreased from 25.2% to 21.3%. In the perspective of the next three months, the share of those who plan to increase production increased from 29.6% to 32.8%. Similar trends were observed in exports. The share of those who will increase exports rose from 35% to 39.4%, while those who plan to decrease fell from 4.9% to 3.6%.
Worries about the difficulty of finding skilled workers continue to diminish – 49.9% of businesses complained of this in January after 51.6% in December, while 34.2% of respondents had problems hiring unskilled staff.
Labor shortages as a result of the draft and/or employee departures remain a major obstacle to doing business during wartime. At the same time, however, a record 65% of businesses were concerned about this problem in January. This surpassed the previous high of 64% reached in November.
In second place remains “dangerous to work” (52%), but the number of businessmen who complained about interruptions in water, electricity and heat supply has decreased (51%).
In the January stage of the survey 478 enterprises from 21 regions of Ukraine took part.
