9,152 new businesses opened in Cyprus in 2024, while 5,566 closed

In 2024, 9,152 new businesses were established in Cyprus, while 5,566 ceased operations. The figures were published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. This means 3,586 more businesses opened on the island during the year than closed.

The business birth rate, meaning the share of new businesses among all active businesses, stood at 9.7% in Cyprus. The provisional business death rate was 5.9%.

Across the EU as a whole, 3,541,482 businesses opened in 2024, giving a birth rate of 10.36%. According to provisional data, 3,143,782 businesses closed, or 9.2%. The European Union has around 34 million businesses in total. Cyprus therefore falls slightly below the EU average in the number of new businesses, but businesses close notably less often here.

New businesses outnumbered closures in 19 of the EU’s 27 countries. The opposite was true in Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

New businesses were most commonly established in Lithuania — 17.5%, Portugal — 16.1%, Malta — 14.4% and France — 14.2%. The lowest rates were recorded in Austria (6.3%), Denmark (7.2%) and Germany (7.8%). The highest provisional business death rate was recorded in Estonia — 29.2%, and the lowest in Greece, at 3.9%.

Eurostat also calculated the number of high-growth businesses — those with at least 10 employees and an average annual staff growth rate of more than 10%. There were 180,200 such businesses in the EU, or 10% of all businesses of this size, and they employed 14.1 million people.