2023 POLICY ROADMAP

Ukraine’s economy is gradually recovering, with projected GDP growth of just under 5% in 2023, following a decline of about 30% in 2022. Inflation is forecast to slow to around 6% by the end of 2023, continuing to challenge entrepreneurs by increasing both costs and uncertainty.

The Ukrainian government has taken steps to support entrepreneurship during the war. Initiatives include the “Affordable Credits” program providing finance for businesses in deoccupied territories, expanding the program to include arms production and energy, and offering new loans to agricultural enterprises.

2023 Framework Conditions Review1

In 2023, 91 national experts in Ukraine participated in the National Expert Survey (NES), providing a wide range of perspectives.

In this NES, just four of Ukraine’s Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions (EFCs) were scored as sufficient or better: Entrepreneurial Education Post-School, Commercial and Professional Infrastructure, Social
and Cultural Norms in support of entrepreneurship, and Physical Infrastructure, with the latter scored as strongest of Ukraine’s EFCs. So Ukraine has a solid physical infrastructure and strong social support
for entrepreneurship. At the other end of the scale, six conditions were rated as poor, scoring less than
4.0, with Government Entrepreneurial Programs the weakest, followed by Government Policy: Support and Relevance. Across the 49 economies, the highest- ranked of Ukraine’s EFCs was Entrepreneurial Education at School, 10th, while the lowest rank was for Government Entrepreneurial Programs, at 45th.

In 2023, Ukraine had an National Entrepreneurial Context Index (NECI) score of 4.3, ranked 29th of 49 economies.

National experts assessed the quality of social support for women entrepreneurs, and their access to resources compared to men (new questions for 2023). Ukraine had a reasonable, if less than sufficient, score for social support with 4.4, ranked 14th, but a very poor score for comparative access to resources, scoring
3.3 and ranked 48th. In this, Ukraine was alongside the small group of Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) which also scored relatively highly for social support for women entrepreneurs but much more poorly for their equal access to resources.

2023 Entrepreneurial Activity Review

Because of the relatively small sample size in Ukraine’s Adult Population Survey (APS), only limited results will be presented here, with no subdivisions within those starting or running a new business in Ukraine.

Ukraine had the highest proportion of adults reporting that their household income had fallen in 2023 of the 46 participating economies, at just over seven in 10.

Entrepreneurship has a reasonable profile in Ukraine, with nearly three out of five adults knowing someone who had recently started a business, nearly one in two seeing good opportunities to start a business locally, and almost three in five considering themselves to have the skills and experience to
start their own. However, of those seeing good opportunities, about one in two would not start a business for fear it might fail.

A creditable one in five adults in Ukraine in 2023 were already starting or running a new business, while one in 20 were Established Business Owners, implying that, despite the most difficult of conditions, one in four adults in Ukraine were involved in running a new or established business.

1 A brief description of the GEM approach is given in the footnote on p. 107.