However war ends, Ukraine's diminished population will hit economy for years

investing.com:

By Olena Harmash

KYIV (Reuters) — With war dragging on, some of Ukraine's millions of refugees are beginning to think about settling for good in the countries they find themselves in across Europe, posing a challenge to rebuilding the economy when the guns finally fall silent.

Natalka Korzh, 52, a TV director and mother-of-two, left behind a newly-built dream house when she escaped the rockets falling on Kyiv in the early days of the war. She is only just finding her feet in Portugal, and doesn't plan on packing up her life again even when fighting stops in Ukraine.

«Now, at 52, I have to start from scratch», said Korzh, who wants to open a charity in Portugal to help other migrants in the town of Lagoa, which she now calls home.

Studies by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR show the vast majority of displaced Ukrainians want to return one day, but only around one in ten plan to do so soon. In previous refugee crises, for example in Syria, refugees' desire to return home has faded with time, UNHCR studies show.

Reuters spoke to four company bosses who said they are now grappling with the likelihood that many refugees will not return and that the workforce will keep shrinking for years to come, a situation also worrying demographers and the government.

Volodymyr Kostiuk, CEO of Farmak, one of Ukraine's top pharmaceutical companies, with nearly 3,000 employees and over 7 billion hryvnias ($200 million) in revenue the year before the war, said with so many people abroad, displaced within Ukraine or drafted into the armed forces he was facing a shortage in qualified laboratory workers and production specialists.

«We need to somehow try to return them to Ukraine, because we already see that the longer people are abroad,