Another difficult year for Italian craftsmanship, albeit with some light on the horizon. Although 2017 – like the previous eight years – also ended with a negative balance between business registrations and terminations (11 fewer companies than in 2016), the result is the least heavy since the beginning of the crisis and confirms, accentuating it, the recovery trend triggered in 2014. This is what emerges from the photograph taken by Unioncamere e InfoRooms on artisan entrepreneurship starting from the data of the Business Register of the Chambers of Commerce (the data is available at the address www.infocamere.it).
Despite the signs of recovery that are being recorded, the crisis is therefore not yet behind us. In front of drop in terminations of businesses that stand at the minimum level of the decade (92.265 units), it turns out the number of those who decide to undertake an artisan activity is also decreasing (80.836) 2012 from today, when the artisan registry marked 1,4 million enterprises, it is recorded a decrease in the stock of over 110 thousand units, with an overall percentage reduction close to 8%, equal to more than one percentage point on average per year.
Looking at the geography of artisan Italy, in 2017 all the macro-areas of the country recorded a decrease in the stock of businesses, in a range between -2.500 businesses in the North-East and over 3.500 in the South, but all in improvement over the previous twelve months. Among the regions, the Trentino Alto Adige it is the only one with very modest growth (+8 companies, +0,03%). The provincial ranking by growth rate shows a reduced presence of provinces characterized by a positive sign: Reggio Calabria (+0,85% equal to +83 companies), Bolzano (+0,71% and +95 companies), Milano (+0,65% for 455 more craft businesses), Taranto (+0,17% and +13 companies), Trieste (+0,11% and +5 units) e Monza (+0,05% and +11 units).
2017 highlighted a significant growth in craft activities in the “Rental, travel agencies, business support services”, in which there was a balance of 1.807 more companies (equal to a growth of 3,6% compared to 2016). Positive performances characterize the sector of 'Other service activities' (in particular thanks to the increase in activities related to personal services), and that of communication, which in the twelve months of 2017 recorded a positive balance of 1.224 and 244 companies respectively, with a growth rate of +0,66% for the first sector and close to 2% for the second. Negative result for construction, which, in 2017 lost over 7 thousand units (-1,4%), but which are doing better than the previous year where they had recorded a contraction of over 10 thousand companies. Things are not better for companies operating in the transportation and storage and for the industry strictly speaking: in 2017 the balance of craft businesses decreased by 1.764 businesses (-2,0%) for the first sector and even, for the second, the drop was 4.744 businesses (-1,5%).
