EXCLUSIVE: Romania’s business registration boom is showing dangerous signs of overheating as the third quarter of 2025 reveals a volatile landscape where explosive growth masks underlying structural weaknesses and unsustainable expansion patterns.

Quarterly Overview: Growth at What Cost?

The June-August 2025 period witnessed staggering registration numbers that should raise red flags for economic analysts. The quarter saw 38,368 new business registrations across three months, representing a massive 65% increase over the same period in 2024. But this explosive growth comes with troubling indicators that suggest an entrepreneurial bubble rather than sustainable economic development.

June 2025: 11,765
July 2025: 15,168
August 2025: 11,435

The dramatic July surge followed by an August decline reveals an unstable pattern that could signal market saturation or regulatory changes catching up with the system.

The Churn Crisis: More Businesses Dying Than Being Born

The most alarming revelation from the quarter is the business churn rate that paints a picture of an economy where companies are failing faster than they’re being created. In August alone,, creating a net negative growth scenario that threatens to undermine the apparent registration boom.

August 2025 Business Exits: 11,709
June 2025 Business Exits: 12,601
July 2025 Business Exits: 14,109

The quarter saw a staggering 38,419 business exits - more than the number of new registrations, creating a net loss of 51 companies over the three-month period.

Entity Type Breakdown: PFA Explosion Masks Structural Weakness

The registration surge is heavily concentrated in individual entrepreneurship (PFA),. This suggests a workforce increasingly turning to precarious self-employment rather than stable corporate jobs.

SRL registrations: Dominant but showing volatility, with July seeing 10,832 but dropping to 7,613

Corporate entities in decline: More complex business structures like SC, CA, and SCS showed dramatic declines, suggesting investors are avoiding long-term commitments in favor of quick, low-risk ventures.

Industry Concentration: Dangerous Over-reliance on Services

The data reveals a worrying concentration in low-barrier service industries, with wholesale and retail trade (16,105 registrations) and transport (15,677. This suggests an economy increasingly dependent on consumption and logistics rather than production and innovation.

Manufacturing stagnation: Despite the overall boom, industrial processing saw only 4,110, indicating the growth isn’t translating into productive capacity expansion.

Construction concerns: The construction sector showed 9,161, raising questions about whether this represents sustainable infrastructure development or speculative real estate ventures.

Regional Disparities: Capital-Centric Growth Creates Imbalances

The growth is heavily concentrated in urban centers, with Bucharest accounting for **2,561, representing over 22% of national registrations. This creates dangerous regional economic imbalances that could lead to social and infrastructure strain.

Development hotspots: Ilfov (727), Cluj (570), and Timiș (555) show strong growth, but many rural counties remain business deserts, creating a two-speed economy that threatens national cohesion.

Seasonal Patterns and Sustainability Concerns

The quarter’s volatility - from June’s moderate growth to July’s explosive surge and August’s decline - suggests the registration boom may be driven by temporary factors rather than sustainable economic development. The pattern resembles previous bubbles where regulatory changes or subsidy programs created artificial spikes followed by painful corrections.

The Bottom Line: Unsustainable Growth Model

While the raw numbers suggest economic vitality, the underlying data reveals a business ecosystem in distress. The combination of explosive PFA growth, high business churn, regional concentration, and industry imbalance suggests Romania is building an entrepreneurial economy on shaky foundations.

The quarter’s net negative business growth (-51 companies) combined with the unsustainable growth rates in individual entrepreneurship points toward a potential crisis in the making. Unless structural reforms address these imbalances, Romania risks experiencing a painful correction that could wipe out thousands of newly created businesses and undermine economic stability.

This analysis suggests that what appears to be economic dynamism may actually be a bubble waiting to burst, with the third quarter of 2025 potentially marking the peak before a significant downturn.