In the first half of the year, the number of companies which suspended their activity skyrocketed, to 80,013 from 6,698 in January-June 2008. The number of voluntary dissolutions increased 351 percent in the first six months of 2009, while voluntary cessations tripled, to 17,914 from 5,965.
However, this phenomenon is considered by businesspeople to be a positive consequence of the lump-sum tax. “This has nothing to do with the crisis. These were, mostly, dead companies, with various activities less legal. And this tax resulted in the voluntary decision of their owners to dissolve them,” the President of the Romanian Businesspeople Association (AOAR), Florin Pogonaru, told Business Standard.
