The National Bank of Ukraine has conducted a regular quarterly survey of enterprise managers on their assessment of the current and future business activity, inflation and exchange rate expectations and changes in the economic situation in the country.

942 enterprises from 22 regions of Ukraine (excluding temporarily occupied Crimea and Donetsk and Luhansk regions), representing the economy in terms of main economic activities, patterns of ownership, size and staff number, were polled in the survey held from February 13 to March 6, 2015.

The survey only reflects the opinions of respondents (heads/managers of Ukrainian enterprises) who were polled, and does not represent NBU forecasts or estimates.

The enterprise managers have worsened their expectations, reflecting the complicated economic situation in Ukraine. The respondents expect consumer prices to rise on average by 27.3% in the next 12 months due to higher production costs and the hryvnia's depreciation against foreign currencies. At the same time, global price movements and money supply were perceived as having the weakest impact on price increases, having been reported by 14.0% and 14.4% respectively.

Overall, the respondents are pessimistic about their enterprises' development prospects over the next 12 months. The Business Outlook Index (BOI) decreased by 12.6 p.p. compared with the previous quarter and made 83.5%.

The respondents expect a significant increase in borrowing needs over the next three months. The percentage of respondents who intend to take out hryvnia loans has increased and remains the largest (88.0% of respondents).

In addition, most respondents (81.1%) indicated that they had had no difficulty in performing transactions using funds placed in the bank accounts.

The survey results showed that the business community had continued to show keen interest in the central bank's activities. 92.7% of respondents said they had been following NBU activities.