The Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER) has released the 21-th monthly enterprise survey “Ukrainian business in wartime” for January 2024.
The goal of the project is to quickly collect information on the current state of the economy at the enterprise level.
The field stage of the 21-th wave lasted from January 16 to January 31, 2024. The enterprise managers compared the work results in January 2024 with December 2023, assessed the indicators at the time of the survey (January 2023), and gave forecasts for the next two, three, or six months, depending on the question. In certain issues (where indicated), the work results were compared with the pre-war period (before February 24, 2022).
In January 2024, 552 companies were surveyed.
Main results of the 21-th monthly enterprise survey:
- In January 2024, long-term expectations are improving, and uncertainty is easing, but the “here and now” recovery is stagnating amid business concerns about security, labor shortages, and demand issues.
- The Business Activity Recovery Index is positive but lower than a month ago.
- The Industrial Confidence Indicator is also positive, but the downward trend continues for the second month in a row.
- Uncertainty in the 2-year perspective has decreased. Uncertainty in the six-month perspective for the business activity continued to decrease gradually and remained unchanged for the overall economic environment. Uncertainty in the 3-month perspective is decreasing (or not increasing) for core expectations, excluding exports.
- Production indicators in January significantly worsened compared to December. At the same time, expectations regarding production in the three months horizon have not changed for the fourth month.
- Employment indicators are declining, and businesses are having trouble finding skilled workers.
- The enterprises’ export results have worsened, but the expected changes in the short term remain positive. The share of enterprises operating at full capacity has remained unchanged for the third month in a row.
- The first place in the list of obstacles is shared by “unsafe to work” and “rising prices.”
- The main events that businesses are waiting for are the end of the war and the reduction of taxes.
- More than half of the respondents have a neutral assessment of the Government’s economic policy.
