New enterprises, Trentino Alto Adige on the podium

Within the national panorama, the North-Eastern distribution is confirmed as one of the most dynamic in the Peninsula. In the first half of 2024 (Company Registry data), the total birth rate (calculated as the ratio between the number of registrations in the first two quarters of the year and the number of companies registered at the end of 2023) was 3.25 new companies for every 100 existing ones, a value higher than the figure for Italy (3.16), the North-West (3.14) and the South (2.86), but lower than that for Lombardy, which tops the national ranking with 3.56. Less encouraging is the mortality rate (3.04), also among the highest in the country, but still not enough to prevent the breakdown from achieving positive growth (+0.21).

At the regional level, it is Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol - third in Italy for the birth of new enterprises (3.46, after Lombardy and Lazio) and second for growth (+0.58, after Lazio) - that drives the breakdown upwards; the performance of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (3.26 and +0.19) and Veneto (3.20 and +0.12) is more tepid (but still positive). Looking at the individual territories, as many as 9 provinces out of 13 are in the national half with the highest entrepreneurial birth rate. Trieste tops the distribution ranking (3.89, second nationwide after Prato) followed, in order, by Bolzano/Bozen (3.54), Trento (3.36), Verona (3.34), Venice (3.32), Treviso (3.31), Gorizia (3.30), Padua (3.21) and Pordenone (3.20). Moreover, Trieste and Bolzano/Bozen are the only two North-Eastern provinces in the national top ten for growth rate (with values of +0.75 and +0.79, respectively). A focus on the socio-anagraphic characteristics of entrepreneurs shows how, in the north-eastern area of the Peninsula, the share of foreign businesses in the total number of businesses is 11.4%, higher than the figure for Italy (11.1%) and the Mezzogiorno (7.0%), but lower than the Northwest (13.2%) and Lombardy (13.6%). Restricting the analysis to the retail sector, the share of foreign companies rises to 18.3% (-1.2 percentage points below the country average), while it reaches 20.7% in the case of joint-stock companies (+1.1 percentage points away from Italy). Among the different territories, the percentage of foreign companies rises in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (13.7%) and, in particular, of Trieste (20.6%, the second province in the country after Prato) and Gorizia (16.0%, eighth), while it goes down a lot in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (8.4%), with a minimum peak in Trento (8.1%, seventy-third).

As for the sectoral analysis, the change in stocks between the last quarter of 2023 and the first two quarters of 2024 shows, within the breakdown, a growth in the sectors related to Professional, scientific and technical activities (+2.3%), Health and social work (+2.0%) and Rental, travel agencies, business support services (+1.9%).