Business boom in Ukraine: more than 193 thousand new sole proprietorships in 8 months of 2024, 60% are started by women

In the first 8 months of 2024, a little more than 193 thousand new individual entrepreneurs were registered in Ukraine. This is reported by Opendatabot, citing data from the Unified State Register (USR).

It is noted that this year 193,192 new individual entrepreneurs started their activities. This exceeds the figures observed before the outbreak of a full-scale war, when 186,144 individuals registered entrepreneurial activity during the same period.

Most new businesses were started by entrepreneurs in the capital — 26,303 or 13.6% of the total number of new sole proprietors this year. New businesses are also actively registered in Dnipropetrovs’k (18,025), Lviv (14,459), Kyiv (14,428), and Kharkiv (12,954) regions.

One third of new sole proprietorships are opened in the trade sector. The IT sector accounts for another 7.6% of registrations. The third place is occupied by the personal services sector with 7%. For comparison, in 2023, cafes and restaurants were among the leaders, and this year they were replaced by information services.

As expected, the majority of new sole proprietorships are started by women. They account for 60% of new registrations. For comparison, in 2023, this figure was 55.6%, and in the first year of the full-scale war, it was —47%.

Along with the high rate of new sole proprietorships, there is also a significant number of small business closures. In the first 8 months of 2024, 120,154 sole proprietorships were closed in Ukraine. This is 62.2% of the number of newly opened sole proprietorships over the same period. Newly established businesses suffered the most: 24.5% of those that were opened last year closed, and —13.7% of those that opened this year. Overall, more than a third of new businesses close in the first year of operation. The average period of operation of sole proprietorships closed this year is 2 years and 7 months.

Source: opendatabot