Romania registered 8,103 new businesses in August 2026. Bucharest accounted for 2,276 of them, or 28.1% of the national total.

That share is the highest in the trailing six months. On its face, it looks like a story about the capital pulling further ahead. It is not — or at least, not in the way it appears. Bucharest’s lead widened in August for an unflattering reason: its provincial peer group contracted faster than it did.

The ratio test

The cleanest way to answer whether capital dominance widened or narrowed is to hold Bucharest against the four counties that normally sit behind it — Ilfov, Cluj, Timiș and Iași — pooled together.

Month	Bucharest	Ilfov+Cluj+Timiș+Iași	Ratio
Aug 2025	2,561	2,310	1.11
Apr 2026	2,907	2,279	1.28
May 2026	2,912	2,502	1.16
Jun 2026	2,667	2,351	1.13
Jul 2026	2,786	2,362	1.18
Aug 2026	2,276	1,595	1.43

The ratio jumped to 1.43 in August from 1.18 in July — the widest gap in the window, and well above the 1.11 recorded in the same month a year earlier. So yes, the capital’s relative position strengthened. Now the important part.

Both sides of the ratio shrank

Bucharest’s August count of 2,276 is 11.1% below its own 2,561 in August 2025. That is a decline. The capital did not grow into a wider lead.

The peer group fell much harder. Year over year:

• Ilfov: 567 in August 2026, down from 727 — −22.0%
• Cluj: 383, down from 570 — −32.8%
• Timiș: 337, down from 555 — −39.3%
• Iași: 308, down from 458 — −32.8%

Nationally, registrations fell 29.1% year over year, from 11,435 to 8,103. That means Cluj, Timiș and Iași all underperformed the national decline, while Bucharest outperformed it by a wide margin.

This is the central finding, and it cuts against the framing the ratio alone suggests. Bucharest is not gaining ground because it is generating more businesses. It is gaining ground because it is losing fewer. On a year-over-year basis, the capital is the most resilient large registry in the country — a distinction that is entirely relative and, in absolute terms, still a contraction.

The combined capital-region reading is worth noting: București plus Ilfov together recorded 2,843 registrations in August, or 35.1% of the national total. But Ilfov — the county that functioned as the capital’s overflow growth engine, posting a 24.1% year-over-year increase as recently as June — was down 22.0% year over year in August. The capital region’s aggregate share held up because Bucharest’s decline was shallower, not because its satellite grew.

Entity mix: the capital is the outlier

August’s national entity mix was 4,419 SRLs against 3,350 PFAs. The incorporated form still leads, but only narrowly.

Bucharest is the one large county where that lead nearly disappears:

• Bucharest: 1,185 SRL / 1,083 PFA — a ratio of 1.09
• Ilfov: 426 SRL / 133 PFA — ratio 3.20
• Cluj: 210 SRL / 167 PFA — ratio 1.26
• Timiș: 152 SRL / 166 PFA — ratio 0.92 (PFA ahead)
• Iași: 156 SRL / 146 PFA — ratio 1.07

Sources: county registration data for Bucharest, Ilfov, Cluj, Timiș and Iași, August 2026.

The contrast with Ilfov is stark. Ilfov registered more than three incorporated companies for every sole trader; Bucharest registered barely more than one. Timiș actually flipped — more PFAs than SRLs.

This matters for interpreting the capital’s relative resilience. Bucharest’s shallower decline is partly a function of its form mix. National SRL formations collapsed 41.95% year over year, while PFA registrations fell just 1.9%. The capital, with PFA registrations at 47.6% of its total, is far more exposed to the one form that is holding up and far less exposed to the one that is collapsing. Its outperformance is therefore as much a compositional artifact as a signal of superior business dynamism.

Industry: no sector is capital-only

The August national industry table is led by transport and storage (1,515 registrations), wholesale and retail trade (1,171), professional and technical activities (852), and information and communications (833).

Every one of these is down sharply year over year: trade −38.1%, construction −33.1%, hotels and restaurants −52.3%, manufacturing −46.7%. Two categories held up far better — transport and storage at −6.0%, and information and communications at −2.7%.

That is the closest thing to a capital-specific industry story the data supports. The two resilient sectors are precisely the ones where Bucharest’s large professional and digital workforce concentrates. But the data does not support a claim that any sector is monopolised by the capital; it supports a weaker claim that the two sectors in least decline are those with the strongest capital presence, which mechanically flatters the capital’s aggregate number.

The exit side is where the real asymmetry sits

The month produced 8,744 business exits — 1,015 suspensions, 3,198 dissolutions and 4,531 deregistrations — against 8,103 registrations. That is a churn rate of 107.9% and net growth of −641.

August 2026 is the ninth consecutive month of net-negative business formation, a run that began in December 2025 and has accumulated −16,756 businesses. The streak is measured only from July 2024, the earliest month with reliable exit data, so it is not comparable to the full historical record.

Bucharest does not escape this. Its own churn rate was 78.4% — 1,784 exits against 2,276 registrations — meaning the capital lost 0.78 businesses for every one it added last month. But the provincial peer group churned harder:

• Cluj: 456 exits on 383 registrations — churn 119.1%
• Iași: 324 exits on 308 registrations — churn 105.2%
• Ilfov: 396 exits on 567 registrations — churn 69.8%
• Constanța: 374 exits on 248 registrations — churn 150.8%
• Bihor: 358 exits on 240 registrations — churn 149.2%

Bucharest destroyed fewer businesses than it created as a proportion of its own stock than Cluj, Constanța, Bihor or Iași. That gap in exit intensity, more than any difference in new business generation, is what produced the wider ratio.

One genuine bright spot deserves mention. The exit side improved nationally: suspensions fell 31.4%, dissolutions 31.0% and deregistrations 19.0% year over year. And net growth has been moving in the right direction for months — from −4,292 in December 2025 to −641 in August, the second-mildest month of the streak.

Does any province outperform on a relative basis?

On relative, like-for-like terms, the answer is no — Ilfov is the only unambiguous candidate and its outperformance is entirely in the rear-view mirror.

The August county growth table is led by Vaslui at +5.0%, from 80 to 84 registrations. That is the only county on the list with positive growth, and it rests on a base of fewer than 100 registrations. Below it, every listed county is negative, from Teleorman at −11.1% to Tulcea at −48.4%. Bucharest, at −11.1%, would rank second on that list — and it is the largest registry in the country by a factor of four.

That is the honest conclusion. The capital-dominance pattern is confirmed for August 2026, but the mechanism is not what the headline number implies. Bucharest is not outperforming the provinces; it is declining less than they are. The gap that opened this month measures differential contraction, not differential growth. And the compositional quirks behind it — the capital’s heavy tilt toward the PFA form and toward the two resilient industries — are not durable advantages so much as exposures that happen to be aligned with the current downturn’s shape.

A note on the absolute picture

August is the weakest month in Romania’s calendar: its mean of 10,681 registrations ranks 10th of 12. The 8,103 total is below even that seasonal norm, and the 12-month moving average — a smoother read on underlying direction — stands at 12,627, down 278 from the prior reading.

The one direction-of-travel signal that is genuinely positive is the narrowing of net losses. The one that is genuinely negative is the level of registrations itself. Bucharest’s 28.1% share says more about how much the provinces have fallen than about how much the capital has risen.