This year, Ukrainian private entrepreneurs have been closing down one and a half times more often than in 2023 – statistics

Ukrainian private entrepreneurs have been closing down at one and a half times the rate this year.

This is evidenced by data from the analytical website YouControl.Market.

In the first six months of 2024, nearly 92,000 individual entrepreneurs (FOPs) ceased their activities, which is 54% more compared to the same period in 2023. The highest number of closures occurred in May and January. The sectors with the most significant reductions were retail and IT.

The number of company closures also increased by 15%, with 1,500 enterprises shutting down. These were mainly entities engaged in wholesale trade, real estate transactions and construction.

It is worth noting that more private organizations (over 13,000) and FOPs (148,500) were also opened during the current half-year compared to the same period in 2023.

Recall that after a record number of FOPs were opened in Ukraine in 2023, suspicions arose in the Verkhovna Rada that this might be a way to avoid mobilization. The tax authorities do not rule out that “private entrepreneurship” could be a form of evading mobilization, where employees are registered as individual FOPs to avoid submitting information about conscripts to territorial recruitment centers.