Every third sole proprietorship (FOP) closes within the first year of operation

In total, 193,192 new FOPs were registered since the beginning of the year. This is even higher than before the full-scale war began when 186,144 new businesses were opened during the same period. After a significant drop at the start of the invasion, the number of new registrations has stabilized and has remained steady for the second consecutive year.

Entrepreneurs opened the most new FOPs in the capital, Kyiv, with 26,303 new businesses, making up 13.6% of all new FOPs this year. Significant business activity was also seen in the Dnipropetrovsk region (18,025), Lviv region (14,459), Kyiv region (14,428), and Kharkiv region (12,954).

The most notable increase in the number of new FOPs over the past year was seen in the Zaporizhzhia region, with an 11% rise, Kirovohrad region with a 10% rise, and Chernihiv region with a 9.6% increase. On the other hand, business activity has noticeably declined in the frontline regions of Luhansk (-14.7%) and Ivano-Frankivsk (-8%) regions. Despite Kharkiv being among the regions with the highest number of new FOPs, the number of registrations in this region decreased by 6% compared to the previous year.

One-third of new businesses are opened in the retail sector, while the IT sector attracts 7.6% of new entrepreneurs. Rounding out the top three most in-demand fields for new businesses is the provision of individual services (7%). It’s worth noting that the top sectors have shifted over the past year: in 2023, cafes and restaurants were among the leaders, but this year, they have been replaced by information services.

The share of women among new entrepreneurs has reached a record high of 60%. In comparison, this figure was 55.6% in 2023 and 47% in the first year of the full-scale war.

Currently, the number of new businesses is 1.6 times higher than the number of closures. A total of 120,154 FOPs (individual entrepreneurs) have closed in Ukraine since the beginning of the year. Newly established businesses have been hit the hardest: 24.5% of those opened last year have closed, and 13.7% of those opened this year have also shut down. The median lifespan of FOPs that closed this year is 2 years and 7 months.

The highest number of FOP closures occurred in Kyiv, accounting for 13% (15,770), followed by the Kharkiv region with 8% (10,097), and the Dnipropetrovsk region with 8% (9,931).