YC.Market has published a study on the dynamics of opening and closing individual entrepreneurs (IEOs) in Ukraine for the first quarter of 2025. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of closed IEOs increased by 50%.
YC.Market has published a study on the dynamics of opening and closing individual entrepreneurs (IEOs) in Ukraine for the first quarter of 2025. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of closed IEOs increased by 50%.
According to analysts, in Q1 2025, more than 108,000 individual entrepreneurs closed, which is more than 50% higher than in Q4 2024 (about 72,000). The number of open individual entrepreneurs also increased, but by 20% - 56,800 in Q1 2025 compared to ~47,300 in the previous quarter.
The largest number of new entrepreneurs appeared in the retail sector - 14,510 sole proprietorships in Q1 2025 (in Q4 2024 there were 13,490). The information technology (IT) sector took second place in terms of the number of openings: 8,586 new sole proprietorships against 6,455 in the previous quarter. These industries also lead among closed sole proprietorships: 32,726 in retail and 17,246 in IT.
"The largest negative balance is observed in trade: in just one quarter, the retail sector lost approximately 18,000 net sole proprietorships (32,700 closed versus 14,500 newly created businesses). In IT and "other services," net losses amounted to about 8–9 thousand sole proprietorships per quarter. This indicates a significant outflow of entrepreneurs even in the most popular business areas," YC.Market notes.
Analysts point to an “abnormally sharp jump in the number of new registrations and closures of individual entrepreneurs” at the beginning of 2025 and explain it by technical factors. On December 19, 2024, Ukraine suffered the largest cyberattack on state registers in recent times . As a result of the attack carried out by Russian hackers, the work of key systems of the Ministry of Justice, as well as the Unified State Register (USR), was temporarily suspended.
Because of this, some of the registration actions were shifted in time and the individual entrepreneurs liquidated in Q4 2024 were included in the statistics of the following quarter. However, even despite this statistical anomaly, the number of closed individual entrepreneurs constantly exceeds the number of new ones, which means a net reduction in the number of small entrepreneurs in the country.
Recall that according to the Unified State Register of Economic Activities , as of February 24, 2025, there were 262,093 active IT-individual entrepreneurs in Ukraine . Over 2024, their number decreased by 39,892.
