March: Business registration increases 8% in Georgia

More businesses were registered in Georgia in March 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 8.1 percent in March 2015 compared to February 2015, said the National Agency of Public Registry.

While monthly figures increased, March data showed business registration had reduced by 5.5 percent when compared to the same period of 2014.

In total 4,465 new business entities were registered in Georgia in March 2015. Of this, 96.2 percent were individual entrepreneurs and 3.8 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 7.4 percent and the number of for-profit ogranisations increased by 27.8 percent in March.

However, the opposite trend was observed when comparing data with the same period of 2014. Year-on-year, March 2015 figures showed a 6.1 percent drop in the number of registered individual entrepreneurs.

As for the for-profit organisations, the number of businesses registered dropped by 14.9 percent in March 2015 compared to the same month of 2014.

Individual entrepreneurs and Limited Liability Companies were the most sought after type of businesses last month. These two types of companies were chosen by the majority (92.5 percent) of the 4,465 registered business entities in Georgia.

More specifically, the Agency noted 54.7 percent of business entities were registered as individual entrepreneurs, while 37.8 percent as Limited Liability Companies.

In total, 168 non-profit legal entities, 150 cooperatives, nine foreign for-profit legal entities and four joint-stock companies were registered in March 2015, stated the Agency.

It is possible to register a business in one day in Georgia. The only thing is to carefully choose which type of business you want to register and then fill in the appropriate legal forms.

Those who want to register a profit-making business are free to choose from any of the following business types; Limited Liability Company, Joint Stock Company, Joint Liability Company, Limited Partnership, Cooperative, and Individual Entrepreneur.

It costs 100 GEL (regular registration) or 200 GEL (accelerated registration) plus 1 GEL in bank fees to register a new business in Georgia.