- 59% of surveyed companies made investments in 2025.
- 71% of enterprises repaired worn-out or obsolete equipment.
- 51% of businesses have already invested or plan to invest in 2026.
43% of businesses believe that now is a more or less favorable time to invest in new equipment, while more than half of the respondents (55%) assess the current moment as a bad time for such investments. This is evidenced by the results of the investment test conducted by the IER in March as part of the 47th monthly business survey, which was carried out among 472 industrial enterprises with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.
“We are recording a trend towards a slight decrease in the share of those who are skeptical about investing compared to 2022 and even last year”, — said Oksana Kuziakiv, Executive Director of the IER.
At the same time, in no year when the IER previously conducted research did the share of businesses considering the current time "very favorable for buying equipment" exceed the statistical error. In the current year, 2% of businesses think so.
59% of surveyed companies made investments in 2025, which is significantly higher than 45% in 2024. “This indicator is the highest for the entire period of the full-scale war and also slightly exceeds the level before the COVID-19 pandemic”, — Oksana Kuziakiv emphasized.
The share of those who invested increases with the size of the enterprise: only 26% of micro-enterprises and 55% of small enterprises compared to 61% of medium and 82% of large ones.
Enterprises in the fields of metal production and metalworking (71%), food industry (69%), and chemical industry (68%) reported investments most frequently.
“At the beginning of 2026, business is significantly more optimistic than at the beginning of last year, when only 35% planned investments. Now, 51% of respondents declare this — and this is against a background of difficulties and instability”, — Oksana Kuziakiv highlighted.
Regarding investment volumes, only 10% plan to increase them compared to 2025, another 73% of enterprises will not change volumes, and 17% will reduce them.
The vast majority of enterprises in 2025 invested in the repair or replacement of worn-out or obsolete equipment (71%). In second place, by a large margin, is increasing the production volumes of existing products (30%), although two years ago only 18% of respondents invested in this direction.
In third place are investments in improving product design, branding, and marketing (29%), in fourth — staff training and professional development (28%), and the top five is rounded out by expanding the product range (26%).
Only 21% of enterprises carried out planned repairs of premises, which is lower than 28–32% in the previous two years. “Part of the investment is related to eliminating the consequences of the war: 10% repaired or replaced equipment, and 4% repaired premises after damage”, — noted Oksana Kuziakiv.
Businesses identified economic uncertainty (46%), danger to personnel or company property (39%), and expensive borrowed capital (30%) as the main obstacles to investment. Companies are also concerned about insufficient profits (28%) and the risk of debt arising or increasing (17%).
“We see a reduction of 10 percentage points over the year in such an obstacle as "unstable political situation" — to 17%, whereas two years ago it was noted by 45% of respondents. This is a significant improvement”, — Oksana Kuziakiv noted.
Another 16% of enterprises named the lack of war risk insurance and insufficient demand as obstacles to investment. Only 9% of enterprises do not feel any obstacles to investment in 2026.
Up to 500 Ukrainian industrial enterprises located in 21 of 27 regions of Ukraine participate in the New Monthly Enterprises Survey (#NRES) by the IER. The survey has been conducted on a monthly basis since May 2022.
Video presentation of the March survey results – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phZQTwxbfIU
All previous surveys since July 2022 http://www.ier.com.ua/ua/proekt_dilova_dumka/NRES_Presentations
