Tax itch again

Labor is increasingly scarce

Who will import equipment without taxation

Using burnt bark

Almost all furniture in Poland

Everything that happened last week in Ukraine and the world and that is relevant to the furniture maker, read in our digest:

1. The Cabinet of Ministers approved a bill amending the Tax Code to balance the state budget.

The document proposes to increase tax rates, including fees for the use of water and forests, environmental and other taxes. According to experts, the government’s initiatives to increase the tax burden on the economy contradict the announced plans to accelerate economic growth. Ukrainian companies risk losing their competitiveness through such tax initiatives.

2. The European Business Association estimates that in Ukraine about 33% of entrepreneurs in the field of small business during the quarantine period lost 50-75% of their income. And to restore the former turnover and revenue takes up to two years. However, the financial issue is not the only thing that entrepreneurs have faced. There was an acute shortage of staff in many areas. The labor market has changed, and in order to replenish its staff, it is necessary to offer stability, high wages and social guarantees. The point is that labor migration will increasingly become emigration.

3. The Cabinet of Ministers approved a bill amending the Customs Code in terms of exemption from taxation on the import of equipment of those foreign enterprises that transfer their activities to the territory of Ukraine. “With this step, we also call on large companies to start working in Ukraine, invest here and create new jobs,” said the Prime Minister, commenting on this intention.

4. French designer Noah Duchofour-Lawrence moved to Portugal and opened a design studio “Made in Situ” in Lisbon, whose mission was to rethink traditional crafts and techniques. While studying local workshops and manufactories, Duchofour-Lawrence met the owners of a small family factory NF Cork, which specializes in the production of corks. On a tour of the factory, he noticed a pile of burnt cork raw materials: it turned out that it was the bark of trees that had burned in one of the natural fires and was no longer usable.

Thinking about how to give new life to a burnt cork, Duchofour-Lawrence developed a collection of Burnt Cork furniture made of composite cork blocks. The designer mixed burnt granules with ordinary ones and achieved a gradient color transition from smoky grey to beige.

5. Today, Poland is not only the second-largest exporter of furniture in the world but also one of the largest national furniture markets in Europe, which sells in particular the products of Ukrainian furniture.

Companies that already export furniture to Poland or are just looking at this market, studying the competitive situation, will be interested in the study “Furniture 1000”, published by “BIZNES meble.pl”. This is a ranking of the first thousand largest Polish furniture manufacturers with key financial indicators and other analytics.

You can get acquainted with the content of the report, order its basic or extended version in English on the website “BIZNES meble.p”.