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.   

851 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 May 15 to May 30, 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.

In Q2 2015, the respondents have somewhat improved the assessments of the macroeconomic situation in Ukraine. The respondents also had slightly better expectations of their development prospects.

In the second quarter of 2015, the inflationary expectations have somewhat decreased. The respondents expect the consumer prices to rise by an average of 27.1% over the next 12 months and associate the upward trend with movements in the exchange rate (83.9%  of responses) and growth in production costs (63.0% of responses).  Budget expenditures on social welfare and global prices and were perceived as having the weakest impact on price increases, having been reported by 10.8% and 11.4% of respondents respectively. The expectations of the exchange rate stability have increased. 23.5% of respondents expect the exchange rate to remain stable in the next 12 months.

The negative expectations of their development prospects for the next 12 months became somewhat weaker.  The respondents expect manufactured products sales to increase in the next 12 months. The Business Outlook Index (BOI) increased by 11.0 p.p. compared with the previous quarter and made 94.5%.

The respondents expect an increase in borrowing needs in the near future. Among those who intend to take loans to finance their business activities (35.4% of polled enterprises), the majoity respondents plan on taking hryvnia loans (87.6% of respondents).

The share of respondents who said that they had no difficulties with effecting transactions using funds in bank accounts increased (84.3% of respondents compared with 81.1% in the first quarter of 2015).

The survey results proved the great interest of businesses in central bank activities - 90.8% of respondents were interested.