Businesses in quarantine: 30,000 cafes closed, taxi orders dropped by 3 times

The service of work with state registries Opendatabot has published the statistics of the way the Ukrainian business survives quarantine. Food services, taxis, and real estate rental were the hardest hit.

Small business and service industry

In 2019, the foodservice market volume in Ukraine counted approximately 50,000 places. Most of them could not reorient themselves to delivery or takeaway.

According to Poster, approximately 2,500 restaurants and other places stopped working during the first two weeks of the quarantine, which counts 63 percent of all their clients. If to view this percentage from the perspective of the total number of cafes and restaurants in the country, it will show that approximately 30,000 places are not working now.

For the period from March 23 to March 29, sales of the food services in Ukraine are 73% lower than they were for a similar period before the quarantine.

The drop is shown not only in Kyiv (78%), but also in such administrative centers as Lviv (78%), Kharkiv (73%), Dnipro (65%), and Odesa (60%).

About 160,000 people have lost their jobs in the restaurant business. Among the Poster clients, more than 13,000 people got laid off.

Housing market declines

According to the Dobovo service, rental prices have fallen by about three times. For example, if a 25-square-meter apartment in Kyiv on the Baseina street, has previously been rented for ₴1,200 ($44) per day, now most of the rooms in Partner Guest House is given to the longtime rent for ₴7,000-8,000 ($255-295) per month.

Taxi industry

The number of orders in the Bond taxi service, working in Kyiv and Odesa, declined almost three times, according to the service founder Petro Obukhov. The prices do not change, but the 10% discount is included automatically because of the low number of cars available.

Judicial system

During the quarantine in Ukraine, about 5,000 court sessions were postponed. There is a legal option to conduct them online, but the mechanics for this are not prescribed.

Some cases are postponed for an indefinite period; others are offered to hear without the participation of the parties.

Unemployment increases   

According to the data by the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs, 1/3 of business owners (mostly microbusinesses) report about 90-100% income decrease since the quarantine started. 50% of the staff of the same entrepreneurs got laid off.

The medium and small business owners report about a 25-50% income decrease in comparison to the pre-quarantine period. They fired 10-25% of their employees.

Big companies lose 10-25% of their income, predicting 25% of workers to be laid off till the end of the quarantine.

According to Work.ua, for two weeks, the number of job openings decreased by 1.8 times in general, and 2.5 times for newly-published positions for two weeks. The number of companies with available job positions showed a 25% decline.