Despite economic challenges and other hurdles, Romania has more than 1.8 million people with their own businesses or shares in businesses, 63,000 more than last year, a study shows.
Contrary to a general belief that most entrepreneurs are young, creative types in the IT sector, the average businessperson in Romania, according to Frames consultancy company, is a man, aged 40 to 49, from Bucharest, with further studies. The ‘average Romanian businessperson’ runs a business in the construction sector or trade, or has a firm focusing on scientific and technical business.
At the end of November, there were about 980,000 companies and 379,000 personal businesses known as PFAs, almost 293,000 more than in 2013 when studies of this kind first began.
In total, there are more than 1.83 million business, which also includes shareholders and individual and family businesses.
“In a year where Romania faced multiple challenges, investors adapted to the economy and invested in developing their businesses…. notably consumer, trade, transport and construction,” a release said.
Some 62.5% of Romanian businesspeople are men, and 37.5% are women, with 31,000 more women and 45,000 more men starting businesses in the first 10 months of the year.
The study found most businesspeople were in the 40-40 age group, about 29% followed by the 30-30-year-olds 26.4%. The number of under-30s embarking on new business ventures, fell the study showed, due to lack of personal funds and difficulty in accessing bank loans.
More than half the businesspeople have further education, some 35% have school-level studies, and 12% declined to say what education they had.
Men were mainly interested in construction, followed by transport, trade, production while women focused on health and social welfare, services, administrative and cultural education activities.
Auto service and repair and construction showed the most growth with a decline in businesses in the agriculture and fishing sector.
,,Consumer good industry is the main motor of the economy, and business reflects this. Then there’s the service industry” the release said.
Most businesses are in major cities such as Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara and Constanta, with depopulated areas in eastern and southern Romania seeing the least private enterprise.
