Economics, Estonia, Good for Business, Markets and Companies

In 2010 the number of new companies also exceeds the average level of the past few years: 19,173 companies have been founded in the first 11 months of this year.

Swedbank’s Small Businesses Banking Manager Krõõt Kilvet referred to Business Registry’s information according to which, an average of a thousand companies a month started operating in 2008, now the figure has grown considerably.

"We can say that since the beginning of 2009, creation of companies has seen an upwards trend and the increase will certainly continue next year,” she said.

Estonian Registries and Information Systems Centre Director Mehis Sihvart said that last year’s large number of registrations was partly due to the fact that sole entrepreneurs (FIE) were obliged to register in the Business Registry. Since not all FIEs managed to do it last year, a large number of FIE-registrations took place at the beginning of this year too.

Sihvart said that people have started founding companies more actively also because they have found out that founding a company is an easy thing to do.