Romania’s business map did something in July that looks like a statistical error: not one of the country’s 42 county units registered more new firms than it did a year earlier. The best-performing county was Satu Mare, and even it shrank by 2.7%. The worst, Alba, lost three-quarters of its registrations in twelve months.

The national picture is brutal. Romania registered just 11,049 new businesses in July, down 27.16% from 15,168 a year earlier. Against those 11,049 entries, the register logged 12,079 exits — 6,458 deregistrations, 4,211 dissolutions and 1,410 suspensions. That is a net loss of 1,030 businesses in a single month, the eighth consecutive month the ledger has run negative, a streak that began in December 2025 and has now erased a cumulative 16,115 businesses.

And July cannot be waved away as a summer lull. July is the seventh-strongest calendar month for registrations on a ten-year average, not a trough. The 12-month moving average sits at 12,904 — July’s 11,049 came in far below it.

The only engine left

Strip out Bucharest and Ilfov and the country barely has a pulse. The two together registered 3,540 new firms — 2,786 in Bucharest and 754 in Ilfov — or 32.0% of the national total. A year earlier they were just 26.3% of a much larger pie.

The gap is even starker when you look at who is still adding businesses. Of the 42 county units, only eight finished July with more registrations than exits: Bucharest (+409), Ilfov (+208), Timiș (+51), Satu Mare (+21), Giurgiu (+13), Călărași (+9), Olt (+7) and Arad (+6). Together they added 724 net businesses. Bucharest and Ilfov accounted for 617 of them — 85% of every net business created in the country. Thirty-three counties lost businesses on net, and one, Covasna, ended exactly at zero.

That is not decentralization. That is a country with one engine and a widening vacuum around it.

One city versus 27 counties

The negative space in the data is the real story. The top 15 counties produced 7,976 registrations — 72.2% of the national total. The other 27 counties produced just 3,073 between them.

Bucharest alone registered 2,786 companies — 90.7% of what all 27 of those counties managed combined. The small commuter county of Ilfov, with 754 registrations, out-registered the bottom ten counties put together, which managed 750.

Meanwhile the provinces collapsed twice as fast as the capital. Excluding Bucharest-Ilfov, provincial registrations fell from 11,172 in July 2025 to 7,509 this July, a drop of 32.8%. Bucharest-Ilfov fell too — Bucharest was down 12.2% from 3,172 a year earlier, Ilfov down 8.5% — but far less severely. The capital’s growing share is not a sign of a thriving Bucharest. It is the arithmetic of a shrinking country.

The counties that halved

The damage is not evenly spread, and the worst of it is in exactly the places that could least afford it. Alba’s registrations collapsed 76.2%, from 650 to 155. Tulcea fell 61.8%, Botoșani 61.3%, Vâlcea 55.8%, Caraș-Severin 52.6%, Dolj 51.1%. Half of the bottom two dozen counties lost roughly half their new-business flow in a single year.

On the exit side, the churn is even more frightening in the provinces. Tulcea recorded 137 business exits against just 60 registrations — a churn rate of 228.3%. Botoșani ran at 177.6%, Bistrița-Năsăud at 172.8%, Gorj at 159.6%. In plain terms: in several counties, for every new firm that appeared, nearly two disappeared.

The same story in a different font: SRLs dying, PFAs on the rise

Even the firms that are being created are structurally weaker. Across the country, SRL incorporations fell 44.9% year-over-year to 5,963, while PFA/sole-trader registrations rose 20.0% to 4,662. The shift has now reached the provinces: in Iași, PFAs outnumbered SRLs, 211 to 201, and the same happened in Călărași, 58 to 48. Even in Bucharest, PFA registrations of 1,286 are now almost level with SRLs at 1,488.

What is still being created

The sector data shows how narrow the remaining activity is. Transport and storage was the only major industry to grow, up 4.4% to 2,307 registrations, joined by information and communications (+2.5%), and by financial services (+28.6%) and agriculture (+16.1%) on small bases. Everything else fell: hotels and restaurants down 58.2%, health care down 57.3%, manufacturing down 56.0%, construction down 34.0%, trade down 30.0%. The available data does not break these sectors down by county, so it cannot be claimed that any particular industry is now a Bucharest monopoly — but the concentration of surviving registrations in the capital region makes that the obvious risk.

Conclusion: consolidation by default

The July data answers the question the provinces have been quietly asking. Bucharest-Ilfov is not booming; it is shrinking at a slower pace than everywhere else and hoovering up the remaining share. The absence of counties from the top of the table is not benign dispersion of economic activity — it is hollowing out, visible in zero-growth counties, churn rates above 200%, and an eight-month national run of net losses. Romania is not decentralizing. It is consolidating into its capital by default, and much of the map is going dark.