There were more than 200,000 active companies with foreign shareholders in Romania at the end of April 2015. Almost half of them were owned by investors from five countries.

Italy had by far the highest number of investors in Romania, more than 40,000. About one in five foreign investments in Romania comes from Italy.

Germany ranked second, with almost 21,000 companies. Next came Turkey, with 14,000 companies, Hungary, with 12,800, and China, with 11,600 firms.

France, U.S., Austria, Israel and Greece also made it to top 10 in terms of number of Romanian firms controlled by investors from these countries.

Netherlands, which is the biggest source of foreign investments in Romania by the value of the capital invested, was only 16th by the number of companies. There were more investors from Iraq and Syria, some 5,900 each, than from the Netherlands (4,700).

However, investors registered in the Netherlands had the biggest amount of capital invested in Romania, close to EUR 8.2 billion, followed by investors from Austria, with EUR 4.7 billion, and Germany, with EUR 4.6 billion.

Italy was seventh by the size of capital invested, with EUR 1.54 billion. U.K. and U.S. were 10th and 11th, with close to EUR 1 billion invested each.

The total amount invested by foreign shareholders in Romanian companies was EUR 41.3 billion, at the end of April 2015.

The statistics presented by the Romanian Trade Registry’s Office (ONRC) only include the share capital subscribed by foreign investors in local companies.

Here is the full ranking:

Romania among most attractive countries in Europe for foreign investments

Foreign direct investments on the up in Romania

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com