Keep your chin up: June 2023 new monthly enterprise survey wave 14 results
On July 12, 2023, the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting” (IER) held an online event: “Economic trends from the business point of view (June 2023),” within the framework of the project “Support for the Public Initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs.”
During the event, the results of the Fourteenth monthly enterprise managers’ survey “Ukrainian business in wartime,” conducted in June 2023, were presented.
“Keep your chin up” is the headline of the June issue of the New Monthly Business Survey, #NRES.
In the short and medium term, business remains optimistic, although it refrains from clear forecasts for the long term, long-term uncertainty has increased. “We have recorded an increase in uncertainty in the long and short term, which indicates a further complication of decision-making for business and a certain “stagnation” of optimism,” said Oksana Kuziakiv, IER Executive Director and Project Manager.
One of the factors affecting the business environment is business security Although the list of obstacles to doing business has moved from 4th to 6th place, more than a third of businesses continue to indicate that it is dangerous to work, said Oksana Kuziakiv.
Among the obstacles to doing business, the 1st place is in terms of rising prices for raw materials and goods, the 2nd is the difficulty with the transportation of raw materials or finished goods in Ukraine and the 3rd is the decrease in demand for products and services. Yevhen Angel, Senior Researcher at IER, noted that although the top three in the ranking remained unchanged, the importance of these obstacles has increased. The expert stressed that despite the expectations of past periods, the share of respondents who choose interruptions in electricity, water and / or heat supply as an obstacle has increased. Yevhen Angel also drew attention to the growing importance of obstacles: the lack of labor due to recruitment and / or departure of employees increased from 29 to 37% compared to the previous month.
Regulatory problems occupy the bottom of the list – 6% of respondents indicated the blocking of tax invoices as an obstacle to business, 4% of respondents consider corruption an obstacle to doing business, 1% consider pressure from regulatory or law enforcement agencies to be such an obstacle. “This time we offered businesses to evaluate illegal and unfair practices as an obstacle to doing business,” said Yevhen Angel.
The results of the survey indicate that on a scale from 1 to 5 (where 1 is not common, 5 is very common), respondents rated such practices as uncommon or moderately widespread. Unfair court decisions and corruption received the highest prevalence scores on the month, with 2.9 and 2.8 points, respectively. Raiding and seizure of property are the lowest (2.0).
Despite the high level of uncertainty, the results of the survey show that business activity is recovering, said Oksana Kuziakiv. In particular, 53.3% of respondents believe that the situation at the enterprise is better compared to “as it was a year ago”, 36.9% believe that “nothing has changed, and only 9.8% report that the situation is worse.
Another signal of recovery is the growing share of enterprises operating at full and almost full capacity. In general, almost two-thirds of respondents have almost fully recovered, and this is, in principle, the result that indicates the stability and resilience of the Ukrainian economy and the Ukrainian real sector.
Other important results:
Employment expectations have deteriorated, the percentage of businesses planning employment growth has risen, and the percentage of businesses intending to reduce the number of employees has increased.
Problems finding employees increased this month. This may mean that the business plans to grow, but there is currently a shortage of workers.
Business continues to be neutral about the state economic policy, but in June we saw a slight deterioration.
✅ Other survey results are in the presentation.
✅You can also watch the presentation video here: http://surl.li/jjzyw
For reference: the field stage of the survey was conducted from June 16 to 30, 2023; telephone interviews were conducted with representatives of 513 enterprises of all sizes located in 21 of 27 regions of Ukraine.
The new monthly enterprise survey has been conducted by the IER since May 2022 within the “Economic Analytics in Wartime” direction, which is part of the “Public Initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs” project, financed by the European Union and co-financed by the Renaissance Foundation and Atlas Network.
