Churn rate breaches 100% as dissolutions surge 31% year-on-year — experts warn the country may be haemorrhaging its corporate base faster than it can rebuild it

Romania’s business register delivered a chilling verdict for February 2026: for every company that opened its doors, another quietly closed them for good. The country’s business churn rate hit 100.91% last month — meaning exits outnumbered new registrations in what analysts are already calling a structural red flag for one of the European Union’s most fragile emerging economies.

The raw numbers tell a brutal story. While 13,139 new businesses registered in February, a staggering 13,258 businesses exited the market through suspensions, dissolutions, or deregistrations — leaving Romania with a net loss of 119 companies in a single month. The health ratio, a key indicator of ecosystem vitality, collapsed to just 0.99 — a figure that, when it falls below 1.0, signals the economy is consuming its own corporate tissue.

The Dissolution Bomb: Up 31% in One Year

The most alarming figure buried in February’s data is the explosion in company dissolutions, which rocketed to 5,663 — a 30.76% increase compared to February 2025’s already-troubling 4,331. Unlike deregistrations — which often reflect administrative clean-ups of dormant shells — dissolutions represent the active, legally-initiated dismantling of operating companies. This is not bureaucratic housekeeping. This is businesses actively choosing to cease to exist.

Business suspensions also climbed, rising 12.87% year-on-year to 1,807 . A suspension is typically a company’s last gasp before formal closure — a holding pattern before the inevitable dissolution filing. With suspensions surging alongside dissolutions, the pipeline of future closures appears to be filling up dangerously fast.

A Fragile Recovery Built on Sand

Headline-watchers might point to the apparent improvement from January 2026, when the churn rate was a catastrophic 124.25% and the economy shed a net 2,686 businesses in a single month. By comparison, February’s net loss of just 119 businesses might seem like cause for cautious optimism — but this reading is dangerously misleading.

The modest “improvement” is not driven by a genuine recovery in business creation. Instead, it reflects a slight technical easing in exit volumes, while the underlying dissolution trend continues to accelerate year-on-year. Romania’s 12-month moving average for registrations sits at a mere 13,077 — a figure so close to the monthly exit pace that any seasonal dip in new registrations could tip the country back into deeply negative territory without warning.

The SRL Collapse: Romania’s Backbone Entity Is Cracking

Perhaps the most damning structural signal in February’s data concerns the SRL — the societate cu răspundere limitată, Romania’s workhorse limited liability company and the entity type that underpins most of the country’s formal private sector employment. SRL registrations in February totalled just 7,032 — a 15.29% collapse compared to February 2025’s 8,301. That is 1,269 fewer genuine businesses entering the economy.

In their place, the registration numbers are being artificially inflated by a surge in PFA registrations — persoane fizice autorizate, or sole trader authorisations — which jumped a seemingly impressive 67.07% year-on-year to 5,495 . But PFAs are not businesses in any meaningful sense of wealth creation or employment generation — they are largely individuals formalising freelance or gig work, often under regulatory pressure or in search of tax optimisation. The composition shift from SRLs to PFAs is not entrepreneurial dynamism. It is a structural downgrade of Romania’s business formation quality, masking a hollowing out of its corporate core.

Meanwhile, the country’s most sophisticated corporate forms — the SA (joint-stock company) and SNC — recorded registrations of just 2 and 1 respectively , representing year-on-year crashes of 60% and 67% . These are the entities that attract serious investment capital. Their near-disappearance from Romania’s registration rolls is a signal that larger investors are stepping back.

Geographic Time Bombs: Cluj and Bihor Under Siege

The regional data reveals that the churn crisis is not evenly distributed — some of Romania’s most economically important counties are facing exit rates that dwarf the national average.

Cluj, widely regarded as Romania’s second economic capital and its tech hub, recorded a churn rate of 111.87% in February — meaning exits exceeded new registrations by nearly 12 percentage points. With 348 dissolutions in a single month , the county that Romania’s political class has spent years touting as a model of modern economic development appears to be quietly haemorrhaging its business base.

Even more alarming is Bihor, which posted a churn rate of 127.18% — the highest among major counties — meaning that for every 10 businesses created, nearly 13 vanished. Argeș was not far behind at 114.63% .

Even Bucharest — which accounts for 2,730 new registrations and 1,119 dissolutions in the capital alone — only managed to keep its churn rate at 88.64% , a figure that would be considered alarming in most healthy economies but looks almost reassuring against Romania’s national picture.

Transport Frenzy Masks Wholesale Trade Rout

At the industry level, the picture is equally distorted. Transport and storage leads all sectors with 2,396 new registrations — a 33.78% surge year-on-year . But this frenzy of new driver and courier registrations, driven largely by platform logistics and PFA-fuelled gig formalisation, tells us more about the precarity of Romania’s labour market than about genuine economic expansion.

Meanwhile, wholesale and retail trade — historically Romania’s largest employment sector — slumped 19.3% year-on-year to just 1,811 registrations . With consumer confidence already under strain from inflationary pressure, the retreat of new trade businesses is a harbinger of further stress on the high street. Real estate transactions fell 12.26% , hotels and restaurants contracted 3.68% , and health and social assistance dropped 5.6% .

The Verdict: A Ecosystem Under Quiet Demolition

February 2026 will not be remembered as the month Romania’s business ecosystem visibly collapsed. The headline registration number — up 8.6% year-on-year — will give politicians and central bankers just enough cover to claim progress. But the architecture beneath that headline is corroding.

A churn rate above 100% is not a statistical curiosity — it is a warning that Romania is currently dismantling businesses faster than it creates them. Dissolutions running 31% above last year’s pace. The SRL — the engine of private sector jobs — registering 15% fewer new entities. Cluj and Bihor, supposed growth poles, quietly bleeding business registrations into the red.

The Romanian economy is not in free fall. But it is standing in a building where more exits than entrances are open — and the gap, for this February at least, favoured the exits.

Data sourced from Romania’s National Trade Register Office (ONRC) via registration and lifecycle event databases. All figures refer to February 2026 unless otherwise stated.