Romania ranks last in EU in number of active SMEs

Newsroom 20/01/2015 | 13:45

Romania has landed on the last place in the European Union as far as the number of active small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is concerned, and on the 17th place as far as the added value brought by SMEs, according to a survey of the Post-Privatizare Foundation, quoted by Mediafax newswire.

In Romania there are 426,295 active SMEs, with a total number of 2.71 million employees, which represents the lowest density of SMEs from all the EU 28 countries.

However, Romania ranked on the eighth place in the EU as far as the percentage of SME employees in the total number of employees of the country.

The added value created by SMEs in Romania is more than EUR 25.8 billion.

In Romania, there are 21.3 small and medium companies per every thousand inhabitants, while the EU average is 42.7 companies.

The countries at the opposite end of the ranking, which have the highest density of SMEs, are the Czech Republic, with 95.9 SMEs, Portugal, with 73.5 SMEs. Malta, with 73 SMEs, and Slovakia, with 70.2 SMEs, reported to one thousand inhabitants.

There are also other strong economies in the European Union where the density of the SMEs is not very high. This is the case of Great Britain and Germany, which have a density of 27.2 SMEs per one thousand inhabitants and respectively, 27.7 SMEs per one thousand inhabitants, according to Mediafax newswire.