A Russian passport didn’t hurt: Odessa region ranked among the top regions for foreign business.

The Odessa region ranked third in Ukraine in terms of the number of registered individual entrepreneurs with foreign citizenship.

According to the analytical platform OpenDataBot, 3,295 foreigners currently run their own businesses in our region.

There are a total of 21,967 foreign entrepreneurs in Ukraine. One in four of them are registered in Kyiv (5,216), with Kharkiv Oblast coming in second (3,506).

On average, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, citizens of other countries have opened 1,896 new cases in Ukraine per year.

Every fifth foreign entrepreneur holds a Russian Federation passport (4,593). They are followed by citizens of Vietnam (1,994), Azerbaijan (1,635), Uzbekistan (1,469), and Moldova, neighboring the Odessa region (1,118).

Retail remains the most popular sector, with 6,346 sole proprietorships operating in this sector. Warehousing (2,746), wholesale trade (1,732), restaurant and hotel business/HoReCa (1,703), and IT (1,624) are also popular among foreign entrepreneurs.