The National Bank reports that business inflation expectations have increased, and exchange rate expectations have improved.
This is stated in the NBU material, the Ukrainian News agency reports.
Inflation expectations have increased somewhat: in the first quarter, the expected annual inflation in the next 12 months was 11.5% compared to 10.3% in the previous quarter.
The share of respondents who expected inflation to be higher than 10.0% was 60.3%.
Military actions remain the most significant pro-inflationary factor for 81.6% of respondents.
Respondents also expected an increase in the influence of such factors as "dynamics of money supply in the economy", "prices on world markets", "social budget expenditures", "production costs", "tax changes".
Instead, for the second quarter in a row, the impact of the exchange rate factor weakened - by a total of 5.4 pp to 70.0%.
Exchange rate expectations continued to weaken: the average exchange rate that respondents expected in 12 months was 44.23 UAH/USD (in the previous quarter - 44.42 UAH/USD).
61.6% of respondents expected the hryvnia exchange rate to fluctuate in the range of 42.01 - 45.00 UAH/USD in the next 12 months.
The Business Expectations Index (BEI) was 108.2% compared to 101.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Survey participants improved their assessments of all components of the index, most of all - regarding total sales volumes and the number of employees.
Businesses in 14 regions, of all sizes, types and areas of activity, expected a revival in business activity.
Military operations and their consequences remain the most significant factor affecting the ability of enterprises to increase production volumes.
At the same time, the impact of the shortage of qualified workers has increased 2.5 times over the past two years.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, exchange rate and inflation expectations and a shortage of qualified personnel are holding back business expectations.
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