December 2015: Business registration increases 16.8%

More businesses were registered in Georgia in December 2015 than in the previous month, with most new company owners choosing to pursue individual entrepreneur and Limited Liability Companies.

Business registration figures increased by 16.8 percent in December 2015 compared to November 2015, said the National Agency of Public Registry.

Following the increase in monthly figures, the December data showed business registration had also increased by 4.8 percent when compared to the same period of 2014.

In total, 4,203 new business entities were registered in Georgia in December 2015. Of this, 97 percent were individual entrepreneurs and three percent were for other profit-driven businesses or organisations.

The monthly figures showed positive growth in terms of the number of registered individual entrepreneurs as well as for-profit organisations in Georgia. Specifically, the data revealed the number of individual entrepreneurs increased by 16.4 percent and the number of for-profit ogranisations increased by 28 percent in December.

However, the opposite trend was observed when comparing data with the same period of 2014. Year-on-year, December 2015 figures showed a 5.8 percent drop in the number of registered individual entrepreneurs.

As for the for-profit organisations, the number of businesses registered dropped by 17.9 percent in December 2015 compared to the same month of 2014.

Individual entrepreneurs and Limited Liability Companies were the most sought after type of businesses in December 2015. These two types of companies were chosen by the majority (95 percent) of the 4,203 registered business entities in Georgia.

More specifically, the Agency noted 53.6 percent of business entities were registered as individual entrepreneurs, while 41.4 percent as Limited Liability Companies.

In total, 127 non-profit legal entities, 65 cooperatives, 12 foreign for-profit legal entities amd seven joint-stock companies were registered in December 2015, stated the Agency. (Agenda.ge)