A study carried out by the Italian Chambers of Commerce associations Unioncamere and Infocamere has discovered that one out of every ten enterprises in Italy is run by immigrants—and that Nigerians have the highest enterprises that are owned by migrants.
Out of over 630,000 companies that are under this category, 75% are individual-owned.
A growing number are led by businessmen from Nigeria, Pakistan, and Albania, while a drastic fall has been noticed in Chinese and Morocco-owned enterprises.
The survey gathered data of immigrant-led businesses signed up at the Chambers of Commerce registry as at December 2020, which exhibited 2.9% growth when compared with that of 2019.
Sectors that immigrants dominate in Italy are retail trade, telecommunications, and clothes manufacturing. Telecommunications and clothes manufacturing account for 32.8% and 32.5% of sectoral representation respectively.
The 480,000, individual-owned businesses is 15.4% of the total number of businesses that are operating in Italy.
Joint-stock companies are next with over 100,000 and partnerships with 39,000 businesses.
The immigrant-owned businesses are located in Tuscany (14.4%); Liguria (14%); Lazio and Lombardy (12.8%).
InfoMigrants said: “When looking only at the businesses led by individuals—the only form in which it is possible to clearly associate the nationality of the owner to that of the company—the figures between December 2019 and December 2020 show clear changes in entrepreneurial communities of various countries of origin.”
