Odesa region is second in Ukraine in terms of the number of individual proprietorships opened by foreigners in 2025

More than 1.6 thousand individual entrepreneurs (IEs) were opened by foreigners in Ukraine in the first nine months of 2025. Odesa region ranked second in this indicator, with only 300 new non-resident businesses registered here.

This is reported by Opendatabot with reference to the Unified State Register.

In total, in January-September 2025, foreigners set up 1,648 sole proprietorships, which is 10% less than in the same period last year. The share of non-resident entrepreneurs is only 0.7% of all newly established businesses in Ukraine.

Foreigners most often start their own business in Kyiv - 544 sole proprietorships (33%), followed by Odesa region — 300 (18%), followed by Kyiv (138), Kharkiv (104) and Lviv (83). The lowest number of foreign entrepreneurs is registered in Volyn, Chernihiv, Sumy, Donetsk, and Kherson regions — from 2 to 17. 26 sole proprietorships were opened in Mykolaiv region during this time.

At the same time, 1158 foreigners ceased their activities, resulting in a net increase of 490 entrepreneurs. The largest number of businesses closed in Kyiv (297), Odesa (17%), Kharkiv (9%), Kyiv (8%), and Dnipro (5%). In Mykolaiv region, 36 sole proprietorships founded by foreigners ceased operations during this period.

Men predominate among foreign entrepreneurs — 69% against 31% of women. The most active in registering businesses are citizens of Azerbaijan (229 sole proprietors), Russia (222), Uzbekistan (160), Moldova (125), and Armenia (95). The most frequent terminations are from citizens of Russia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

«Opening a sole proprietorship by foreigners is an absolutely legal practice. Persons with a residence permit in Ukraine receive a tax number and can conduct business on a general basis. This also applies to Russian citizens if they are legally in the country,» explains Denys Popov, Head of the Legal Department at Opendatabot.

The most popular areas of activity among foreign entrepreneurs are retail trade (32%), catering (14%), wholesale trade (9%), computer programming (6%) and information services (4%).

As reported earlier, NikVesti wrote that the number of raiding cases in Ukraine has decreased by more than three times in four years.