Romania’s business registry contracted for an eighth consecutive month in July 2026, but the geography of the contraction runs against the assumption that the capital region is the problem. Bucharest-Ilfov added firms on net, while the entire national net decline was generated outside it.

National registrations totaled 11,049 against 12,079 exits, producing net growth of -1,030. The current negative streak started in December 2025 and has a cumulative net decline of -16,115. That streak should not be read as a record beyond the available data window: the series itself shows it is measured only from July 2024, the earliest month with trustworthy exit data.

The regional split is stark. Bucharest registered 2,786 new firms and Ilfov registered 754, for 3,540 in the capital region. The same two counties recorded 2,377 and 546 exits respectively, for 2,923 total. That leaves Bucharest-Ilfov with net growth of +617. Subtract those two counties from the national totals and the rest of Romania registered 7,509 firms while recording 9,156 exits, a net decline of -1,647. In other words, the national net loss is not concentrated in Bucharest-Ilfov; it is entirely a provincial phenomenon, and the provinces’ deficit is deeper than the countrywide figure because the capital region was positive.

The decline is also broad within the provinces, not the artifact of a few weak counties. Of the 42 counties covered, only eight posted positive net formation: Bucharest (+409), Ilfov (+208), Timiş (+51), Arad (+6), Satu Mare (+21), Olt (+7), Călăraşi (+9) and Giurgiu (+13). Cluj, the second-largest registration county outside Bucharest-Ilfov, had 577 registrations but 780 exits, for net growth of -203. Constanţa, Iaşi, Bihor, Braşov, Prahova and Dolj were also negative. The negative sign is geographically dispersed.

Registration growth tells the same story. National registrations were down 27.16% year-over-year. Bucharest fell 12.17% and Ilfov fell 8.50%, according to the county-level year-over-year data for county-level comparison. That puts Bucharest-Ilfov’s combined decline at roughly 11.4%, while the rest of Romania fell about 32.8%. The capital region’s share of national registrations therefore rose from about 26.3% a year earlier to 32.0% this July, even as both sides of the divide contracted.

The gap is not simply a seasonal artifact. July’s long-run mean is 11,926 registrations, ranking seventh of 12 calendar months. July is not a natural trough, so the shortfall relative to both the seasonal mean and the prior year carries weight.

Does the capital’s raw registration lead hold up when scaled by the size of its business-exit base? Yes. The capital region’s churn rate was 82.6 exits per 100 registrations, compared with 121.9 exits per 100 registrations in the rest of the country. Bucharest’s registration-to-exit ratio was 1.17, Ilfov’s was 1.38, and the rest of Romania’s was 0.82. In other words, the capital region is not merely bigger; it is also absorbing new firms more successfully than the provincial average. A full normalization by county GDP or population is not possible with the available dataset, but scaled by exit volume the capital’s lead does not disappear.

The structural shift from SRL to PFA is visible in both capital and province, with local differences. Nationally, SRLs accounted for 5,963 registrations and PFAs for 4,662. SRL registrations fell 44.95% year-over-year while PFA registrations rose 19.97%. In Bucharest the split was nearly even at 1,488 SRL and 1,286 PFA. Ilfov remained SRL-heavy at 559 SRL versus 188 PFA. Timiş was nearly balanced at 304 SRL and 278 PFA, Cluj at 347 SRL and 226 PFA, and Iaşi was PFA-majority at 211 PFA versus 201 SRL. That suggests the PFA shift is broad-based rather than a capital-only story.

On industries, national data show transport and storage leading with 2,307 registrations, followed by trade at 1,590, professional services at 1,207, construction at 1,021, and IT/communications at 971. Year-over-year, transport rose 4.39% and IT rose 2.53%, while hotels and restaurants fell 58.15%, manufacturing fell 55.98%, and health/social care fell 57.31%. The dataset does not provide county-by-sector detail for July, so the question of whether any sector is exclusive to the capital cannot be tested directly. What is clear is that the sectors still growing nationally are not limited to a single Bucharest-centric category.

Taken together, the July data reject the idea that Romania’s business decline is a Bucharest-Ilfov problem. The capital region was one of the few net-positive zones, and it is contracting more slowly on registrations than the rest of the country. The national net decline is spread across most counties, while Bucharest-Ilfov remains the main cushion. The distributional story is not a capital collapse, but a widening gap between a resilient capital region and a broadly contracting provincial economy.