Termene.ro analysis: 2022, the most profitable year for Romanian companies

Termene.ro, the business intelligence platform from Romania, which integrates data analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence about companies, has carried out a complex analysis of the evolution of the business environment in 2022.  

The analyzed data showed that last year, Romanian companies enjoyed unprecedented revenues and profits. At the same time, in 2022 there was an increase in the total number of companies submitting annual financial statements, and for the first time in the last 5 years, they exceeded the threshold of 810,000. The record number of companies that submitted their financial statements at the end of 2022 was generated by the end of the pandemic and the resettlement of the way of working in most fields of activity. At the same time, the launch of the Start-up Nation financing program, dedicated especially to newly established companies, provided the financial framework for professional reorientation, so that many new businesses appeared on the market.

Against the background of high inflation (over 13%), the revenues of 2022 reached a record level compared to both 2021 and the rest of the analyzed years, namely 2020 and 2019. Thus, the total revenues recorded by the companies managed to exceed for the first time the value of 2 thousand billion lei, more precisely 2,392 thousand billion, according to the Termene.ro analysis.

At the same time, the year 2022 represented a record in the case of profits generated by Romanian companies as well as in their average profitability.

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If in 2020, the general profit achieved at the national level was 103 billion lei, being the first year in which the threshold of 100 billion lei was exceeded, in 2021 its value increased by almost 50% – reaching 149 billion lei, and in 2022 it registered a major increase of 50%, reaching over 204 billion lei.

The profitability of the companies in 2022 was based on the emergence of the phenomenon of “greedflation”, an inflation fueled by the increase in prices in an artificial way. Thus, against the background of the rise in the price of raw materials, prices are increased not only to cover those increases but also to generate higher profits than before. At the same time, the emergence of the labor force, especially from Asia, which accepts lower wages than the local labor force, generates a reduction in the final cost.

For the year 2023, the increase in profits and profitability is still predicted against the background of the significant reduction of energy costs (electricity, gas, fuel) in the context where prices maintained their values (in some cases even increasing) in the first part of the year 2023. At the same time, Termene.ro’s estimates indicate a continuation of the process of increasing the share of cheap labor, willing to work for wages close to the minimum in the economy at the expense of the domestic one.

After a period of 3 years of constant decrease in the number of occupied jobs, the year 2022 changed the trend. This was the first year since the start of the pandemic in which the number of jobs held in the private sector has not decreased in comparison to the previous year and remained constant at 4.01 million. However, the number of employees registered last year remains at a lower level compared to 2019, when 4.12 million employees were registered. This reduction of employees in the private sector is based on Romanians’ appetite for entrepreneurship, visible through the record number of active companies, and automation processes, which reduce the need for the human factor, but also the phenomenon of Romanian labor migration to developed countries.

The data analyzed by Termene.ro show that the most significant decrease, in 2022, was recorded in production, where there were 5% fewer jobs compared to 2021, i.e. a reduction of over 50,000 job titles. At the same time, commerce experienced a 1,5% decrease in the number of jobs, respectively 13,000, and agriculture, where a reduction of 2,.5% was recorded, respectively 3,000 jobs.

On the opposite side, the largest increase in the number of jobs was visible in the field of IT&C, where in 2022 there were 16% more employees than in the previous year, respectively an increase of 30,000 new jobs. There were also more employees in the hotel sector by approximately 7%, 10,000 jobs to be exact, and in the construction industry, the number of jobs increased by 3,2%, respectively 14,000 jobs. Most jobs increased in Bucharest-Ilfov, Timiș and Cluj. At the opposite end, the biggest decreases were registered at the level of Argeș and Bihor counties.

The stagnation of the number of jobs occupied in the Romanian private system and the preservation of a relatively constant trend have as their main argument a process of their occupation by foreign personnel, coming especially from underdeveloped countries in Asia.