Business During Wartime: How the Activities of Individual Entrepreneurs Have Changed.

During the war, more than 763 thousand new individual entrepreneurs registered

According to the Unified State Register, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, over 763 thousand individual entrepreneurs (IE) have been registered, and 685 thousand IEs have ceased their activities. The most popular area of activity for new entrepreneurs was retail trade, chosen by 28.1% of them. IT (9.1%) and wholesale trade (7.2%) also became popular. It is noted that before the invasion, the number of new IT IEs was almost twice as high.

Growth of entrepreneurial activity in certain sectors

During the war, the number of new individual entrepreneurs in the field of postal and courier activities increased significantly (3 times), in education (2.6 times), and in finance (2.5 times). During the same period, there was a decrease in the opening of new enterprises in the IT sector and in the trade of motor vehicle transport.

Changes in the gender distribution of entrepreneurs

Due to the unfolding of the war, the gender distribution of entrepreneurs also changed. Now women account for 61% of new IEs, which is a significant increase compared to January 2022, when one in every two new entrepreneurs was a woman. The highest number of women entrepreneurs has been registered in Khmelnytskyi (60.5%), Kirovohrad (60.1%), and Poltava regions (59.4%).

Women more frequently open businesses in the fields of services, education, and clothing production, while men are more active in construction, transportation, and logistics.

Leaders in the number of new IEs

During the war, the highest number of new individual entrepreneurs was registered in Kyiv (108,536), Dnipropetrovsk (68,377), and Lviv regions (60,009).

Strengthening business in regions near the front

The situation at the front has also influenced the placement of businesses. In regions bordering active combat, fewer new individual entrepreneurs are registered: in Luhansk, the number of registrations decreased by 85%, in Kherson - by 67%, and in Donetsk - by 60% compared to January 2022. During the same period, the number of new entrepreneurs increased in Rivne (+25%), Ivano-Frankivsk (+10%), and Chernihiv (+10%).

The situation with enterprises affects the number of new IEs

Despite the risks of war, the number of opened individual entrepreneurs has exceeded the number of closed ones every month since the registration began in March 2022. However, at the end of 2024, the situation changed, likely due to increased tax burdens for entrepreneurs. A record low was recorded in January 2025, when 61,455 IEs were closed, while only 21,358 were opened.

Increase in the amount of single tax collection

Over the three years of the full-scale war, entrepreneurs paid more than 126 billion UAH in taxes. The amount of single tax paid by entrepreneurs increased annually, except for 2022. In 2024, the revenue from the single tax amounted to 55.1 billion UAH, which is 1.6 times more than in 2021 (34.8 billion UAH).