The Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER) has released the 22-th monthly enterprise survey “Ukrainian business in wartime” for February 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 22-th wave lasted from February 19 to February 29, 2024. The enterprise managers compared the work results in February 2024 with January, assessed the indicators at the time of the survey (February 2024), 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 February y 2024, 542 companies were surveyed.
Main results of the 22-th monthly enterprise survey:
- Against the backdrop of improved short-term expectations and a traditionally high level of two-year uncertainty, the shortage of workers has become one of the key obstacles to business development.
- The Industrial Confidence Indicator increased, as did the share of businesses operating at full capacity.
- At the same time, the Business Activity Recovery Index has been decreasing for the second month in a row.
- Uncertainty remains high in the long-term perspective and has increased for the overall economic environment in the six-month perspective.
- Business expectations for the two-year and half-year perspectives remain unchanged.
- Production indicators and expectations for the three months have improved, while expectations for exports remain unchanged.
- The share of enterprises operating at full capacity increased slightly compared to the pre-war period.
- For the first time in several months, the trend of reducing the number of workers was interrupted.
- However, the lack of labor as an impediment to doing business ranks second in the rating of challenges to doing business, and problems with finding workers remained unchanged compared to the previous month.
- “Unsafe to work,” although has not changed significantly in terms of percentage, fell from first to third place in the rating of impediments. The recovery of export activity continues to stagnate. The percentage of negative assessments of state policy slightly increased.
