Romania recorded 11,049 new business registrations in July 2026, a 27.2 percent decline from 15,168 in July 2025. The top of the sector table, however, tells a narrower story: transport and storage generated 2,307 registrations, up 4.4 percent year on year.

That transport result is not a broad-based expansion. It is a pillar standing in a field where most other large sectors contracted.

The absent and barely present sectors

The negative space shows up most literally at the bottom of the industry table. Public administration and defence recorded zero registrations in July, while private households as employers recorded one. Extractive industries had 10 registrations, water and waste management had 26, and energy supply had 37. Some of these are structurally small categories, so their absence alone is not an economic signal. The more meaningful gap is what happened to sectors that normally carry large registration volumes.

The hollowing behind the headline

Outside transport, the large-sector picture is sharply negative. Trade fell 30.0 percent year on year, construction fell 34.0 percent, professional services fell 19.6 percent, hotels and restaurants fell 58.2 percent, manufacturing fell 56.0 percent, health and social assistance fell 57.3 percent, cultural and recreational activities fell 50.7 percent, administrative and support services fell 45.2 percent, and other services fell 39.1 percent.

Among the ten largest sectors, only transport and information/communications grew year on year; information/communications gained just 2.5 percent. The smaller gainers — financial intermediation and insurance at 28.6 percent, agriculture at 16.1 percent, and extractive industries at 42.9 percent — were not large enough to offset the losses.

The monthly path reinforces the point. Total registrations slipped from 12,639 in April to 11,049 in July, while transport rose from 1,933 in April to 2,307 in July. In other words, transport became more central while the broader registration base thinned.

Business exits reinforce the contraction

The lifecycle data point in the same direction. Romania recorded 12,079 total business exits in July — suspensions, dissolutions and deregistrations combined — against 11,049 registrations. Net growth was -1,030, and the churn rate reached 109.3 percent, meaning exits exceeded registrations.

The net-negative run is not a one-month blip. It has now lasted eight months, starting in December 2025, with a cumulative net decline of -16,115 over that period. The comparison is limited by the available data window, which begins in July 2024, so it cannot be extended to earlier periods. Still, it shows that the current registration weakness is not being offset by falling exits.

Regional data show contraction, not rotation

The county-level data do not provide a sector-by-sector breakdown, so it is not possible to map transport’s regional concentration directly from this dataset. What they do show is that even the strongest counties are broadly down. Bucharest led with 2,786 registrations, followed by Ilfov at 754, Timiș at 602, Cluj at 577, Iași at 429 and Constanța at 399.

The “top growing counties” list is itself revealing: Satu Mare, the least negative county in the ranking, was still down 2.7 percent, followed by Călărași at -9.1 percent and Giurgiu at -16.0 percent. That is not a story of regional rotation into new growth poles; it is a story of smaller declines rather than gains.

What the data support

The question is whether July’s transport-led headline obscures a hollowing of other sectors. The data support that reading. Transport and storage was the only large sector to post a substantial year-on-year increase, and it accounted for more than one in five new registrations. The sectors that normally diversify Romania’s registration base — trade, construction, professional services, hospitality, manufacturing, health and cultural activities — all contracted by double digits. At the same time, business exits exceeded registrations, extending an eight-month net-negative streak.

The result is not a broad sectoral rotation so much as a concentration: activity is increasingly clustered in one expanding sector while the surrounding registration base thins.