Ukraine witnesses highest number of sole proprietorship businesses opened in three years

In June, Ukraine registered a record number of entrepreneurs over the past three years – more than 31,000 individual entrepreneurs.

The Opendatabot platform, which works with open data, reported that, in general, in the first half of 2023, Ukrainians opened a little less than 134,000 new businesses — this is almost 70% of the number of open businesses for 2022. Most "newly-made" sole proprietors are engaged in retail trade, but there are still enough of those who have decided to work in the IT field. 

The most popular sectors in which new businesses are opened do not change. Like last year, retail trade took first place in the first half of 2023, with more than 38,000 Ukrainians. The second most popular is "computer programming, consulting, and related activities," which was the most popular before the start of the full-scale war. This year, 12,000 entrepreneurs have already started their own businesses in this area. "Provision of other individual services" closes the trio — more than 8,000 entrepreneurs have started working in this area.

Among the regions, Kyiv became the leader in the number of newly created sole proprietorships in the first half of the year — slightly more than 19,000. Ukraine's central Dnipropetrovsk and western Lviv regions took second and third place — almost 12,000 and 10,000+, respectively. The worst registration rates are in those regions that are fully or partially occupied and where hostilities are currently taking place.

As was reported, despite the full-scale invasion, more than 202,000 new entrepreneurs were registered in Ukraine in 2022. Most of the new businesses are opened in the field of retail trade.