It was the drive towards entrepreneurship of foreign residents in Italy that kept the balance of Italian companies in positive territory. According to a study by Unioncamere-InfoCamere, elaborated on the basis of data from the last three years of the Business Register, there are 86 more companies created by immigrants between 30 June 2012 and 30 June 2015. Overall, today there are just under 540 , equal to 8,9% of the national productive fabric, with a conspicuous presence above all in Construction, in Wholesale and Retail trade, in Rental, travel agencies and business services and in Accommodation and catering services.
“The corporate path is confirmed as one of the ways in which foreigners arriving in Italy can integrate into our economic and social system – comments the President of Unioncamere, Ivan Lo Bello -. Today we are confronted with impressive migratory flows, and so it is worth remembering that in addition to reception policies, low-cost integration tools and policies must be put in place for our country. Among these, those to support the start of the entrepreneurial activity, where the Chambers of Commerce play an important role for those who want to open a new business".
Within the universe of foreign companies active in Italy, the most conspicuous component is represented by sole proprietorships (about 432 thousand) which account for 13,3% of the total number of companies registered with this legal form.
Precisely the in-depth study of this type of enterprise allows us to grasp the strong ethnicisation of some components of our productive fabric.
In the clothing manufacturing sector, for example, foreign sole proprietorships, primarily Chinese, account for 45% of the total. Immigrants are also 43% of the 7 sole proprietorships operating in the telecommunications sector, with Bangladesh, Pakistan and Morocco representing the main countries of origin of the owners of these businesses.
Foreign sole proprietorships, first of all those led by Romanians and Albanians, are also a quarter of the sole proprietorships specialized in construction works.
Prato, Trieste, Florence, Imperia and Reggio Emilia are the provinces with the highest incidence of foreign companies out of the total. On the opposite side Taranto, Potenza, Oristano, Matera and Bari.
