3,044 of the 5,570 Brazilian municipalities have no active establishment of the measured networks in the CNPJ records

The CNPJ (Brazilian company registry) records report the municipality of each establishment, which makes it possible to identify where none of the 503 measured networks has an active establishment under its own trade name. In the reference month of October 2026, this occurs in 3,044 of the 5,570 municipalities (54.6%), which add up to 25.0 million inhabitants in the 2022 Census, or 12.3% of the population. The measure describes the records. Absence from the records does not prove the real absence of a unit and does not indicate a business opportunity: 381 of these municipalities appear in the store locator of at least one measured network, 177 have an active establishment of a census network with fewer than 30 CNPJs and 442 have an active CNPJ with the name of a measured network in another activity. Without any of these indications, 2,219 municipalities remain, which does not prove absence either.

Absence follows size. It affects 94.8% of municipalities with up to 5,000 inhabitants, 49.6% of those with 10,000 to 20,000, 17.6% of those with 20,000 to 50,000 and 7 of the 338 with 50,000 to 100,000, and none above 100,000. By GDP per capita, with the quintiles used in the indicator of presence by income, the share ranges from 69.3% in the poorest quintile to 40.9% in the wealthiest, and within the same size, among municipalities with 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants, from 73.2% to 14.9%. Among states with 20 municipalities or more, the share ranges from 16.3% (Rio de Janeiro) to 83.9% (Amazonas). Of the total, 2,599 municipalities have never had a CNPJ attributed to the measured networks, and 445 have had one, 93 of them with a CNPJ now classified as inapt or suspended, a status that does not count as active. The largest with no indication in another source are Viseu (PA), São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM) and Baião (PA).

Since January 2023, 231 municipalities have received their first CNPJ of a measured network, counting all registration statuses, so that a municipality whose previous unit was deregistered does not count as an entry. Of these, 203 still have an active establishment. The pace is declining, with 140 first entries in 2021, 47 in 2025 and 27 in 2026, up to the reference month of October 2026. Openings in municipalities with up to 50,000 inhabitants fell less, from 1,212 to 908 CNPJs over the same interval, and, in 2025, 94.9% of them took place in a municipality that already had a record of a measured network. Between the snapshots of the records of May 2023 and October 2026, 289 municipalities came to have an active establishment and 217 ceased to have one.

In municipalities with up to 50,000 inhabitants, chocolate (19.4%), dentistry (16.1%) and vehicle inspection (12.3%) account for 47.9% of first units since 2023. In chocolate, a single network accounts for more than half of the first units, so the category reflects that network's expansion. Compared with other openings in these municipalities, vehicle inspection and pharmacy have a higher share of first units, both from 2015 to 2022 and since 2023.

How we calculate

Presence is the active establishment (registration status 02) that the observatory's census attributes to the 503 networks with at least 30 establishments, in the open CNPJ data of Receita Federal (the federal tax authority), reference month October 2026, with the same criterion as the indicator of presence in municipalities. Size comes from the resident population in the 2022 Census (IBGE, the national statistics institute, SIDRA table 4714), in the 5,570 municipalities that existed at the time of the Census. GDP per capita is that of 2023 divided by the estimated population for 2024, in quintiles that each hold a fifth of the population, the same calculation as in the indicator of presence by income. It does not measure household income.

For the history of each municipality, we gathered all CNPJs attributed to the measured networks in any status, active, deregistered, classified as inapt or suspended, and those that had the network's name in the snapshots of May 2023, October 2024, October 2025 and September 2026 and no longer have it (6,048 CNPJs). The first unit is the CNPJ with the earliest start-of-activity date in this set. Without these snapshots, the count of entries would be 245 municipalities, not 231.

The check on absence uses 343 store locators maintained by the measured networks themselves, read through November 8, 2026, with 62,445 addresses matched by municipality and state, the census networks with fewer than 30 CNPJs and the active CNPJs bearing the name of a measured network under a CNAE (national classification of economic activities) code other than the expected one. The movement between snapshots compares the active establishments of May 2023, with the MEI (individual microentrepreneur regime) comparability rule used in the indicator of network evolution. Of the 289 municipalities that came to have an active establishment, 171 are a first presence, 58 are a return with a new CNPJ after a previous record, and 60 have an active CNPJ older than the snapshot, the case of a company that adopted the brand later or returned to active status.

In the categories, the share of first units is compared with the share of other openings in municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, in the windows from 2015 to 2022 and since 2023. A category is flagged when the share is higher in both windows, with at least 5 first units in each, and when the 95% interval of the difference, obtained from 2,000 resamples of networks, lies above zero. The 20 networks with a namesake risk identified when reading the trade names, or with a website that lists fewer than half of the attributed CNPJs, are excluded from this calculation and from the list of names.

Calculated on November 8, 2026. Method version 1.0. Sample: 5,570 municipalities, 503 networks, 231 municipalities with a first unit since January 2023.

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