Six out of ten new FOPs in the first quarter of 2024 were opened by women. In total, about 43,600 Ukrainian women registered as individual entrepreneurs. This is 59% of the total number of FOPs that appeared in the state register during January-March of the current year.
During the same period, men registered about 30,500 new FOPs.
It is worth noting that in recent years, it was women in Ukraine who were more often registered as natural persons-entrepreneurs. However, there was no such noticeable gender bias before. Mobilization is among the reasons that led to the change in balance.
If we talk about the economic directions that are preferred by Ukrainian FOPs, trade is the priority here. Ukrainians are also often registered in the direction of “programming” or as providers of information services. Public catering, education, transport are also among the popular areas.
“Most often, FOP women choose for their activities retail trade (68% of women and 32% of men), provision of other individual services (89% of women and 11% of men) and information services (63% of women and 37% of men). In the same men more often choose computer programming (58% of men and 42% of women) and wholesale trade (52% of men and 48% of women)” – says the research of the platform The opendatabase.
If we talk about the geography of registration of new businesses, the leaders are the city of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Lviv Oblast.
In general, in January-March, 30,900 FOPs were closed in Ukraine and 74,000 new ones were opened. This is a record indicator. It exceeds the indicators of the first quarter of 2023 by more than 30%. The figures are even 18% higher than in 2021 – before the economy was rocked by a full-scale war.
