Two thousand companies in the south of the country owe wages

More than two thousand companies owe wages in the South of Ukraine. In total, more than thirty thousand cases of arrears were recorded across the country.

This is evidenced by the data of the Opendatabot monitoring service.

In August, more than 34 thousand cases of wage arrears were registered. Almost 2,000 companies had debts to their employees.

The leader among the southern regions in terms of the number of companies that owe their employees is Mykolaiv region - 797 companies in total. Odesa region came in second with 667 companies. Kherson region took third place, but did not get far - 661 companies delayed salaries to their employees.

Although the number of debts decreased at the beginning of the full-scale war, more new proceedings were opened in the first eight months of 2024 than in the entire year of 2023.

The largest number of proceedings on wage arrears was recorded in 2021 - 6,300. After the start of the full-scale invasion, their number decreased by 29%. However, last year the figure began to grow by 6.6%. In 2024, companies already owed 7.1% more than in the previous year.

There are 1,872 companies among the debtors. Sumy region has the largest number of debts - 5.6 thousand cases (16.4% of the total), followed by Kyiv with 3.4 thousand debts (9.8%) and Dnipropetrovska region with 2.2 thousand (6.6%). At the same time, in about 3,000 proceedings, the region was not identified.

Among organizations, the largest debtors are state-owned enterprises and joint-stock companies - they have more than 11 thousand and 9 thousand cases of debt, respectively, which is 33.8% and 28.8% of the total.

Companies rank third with 4.9 thousand cases (14.2%). Subsidiaries and utility companies are responsible for 12.5% and 4.3% of all debts.

It should be noted that subsidiaries of Oblavtodor account for 9.7% of the total number of wage arrears (3.3 thousand cases). Only the employees of the Sumy Machine-Building Research and Production Association have the largest number of debts, with 4,071 proceedings, which is 11.8% of all debts.

The most persistent debtors among Ukrainian companies are:

• Sumy Machine-Building Research and Production Association - 4071;
• Poltava Oblavtodor - 1079;
• Nizhyn Engineering Armament Repair Plant - 1038;
• Sumy Machine-Building Research and Production Association - Engineering - 892;
• Energostal - 876;
• Zaporozhtsivilproekt - 610;
• Rivne Automobile Repair Plant - 508.

Also, almost 20,000 cases of child support arrears were opened in the south of the country as of early August, with Odesa region ranking first in this regard.

Over the past two years, the number of debtors has increased significantly, as reflected in the Unified Register of Debtors. As of the beginning of August 2024, almost 190 thousand proceedings for non-payment of alimony were registered in Ukraine, which is 14% more than at the beginning of the war.

The number of utility debtors in the South of Ukraine totals 49,515 consumers. Debts for utilities have increased by one third since the start of the full-scale invasion.

Currently, there are 701,000 proceedings in Ukraine to recover debts for housing and communal services. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, debts have increased by 37 percent.

In addition, Mykolaiv region was one of the smallest in terms of the number of loans under the eHouse program, while Odesa region became the leader among the regions. In less than two years of operation of the eHouse preferential lending program, just over 11,000 loans worth over UAH 17.6 billion have been issued. 43% of the total amount was issued in the first half of 2024. Currently, the average number of loans is up to 800 per month.