1 in 10 firms immigrant owned (2)

(ANSA) - Rome, February 13 - At year end 2017 there were 590,000 companies registered in Italy but owned and run by immigrants, or 10% of the total, the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce said on Tuesday.
    This represented a 3.4% rise over the previous year, compared to a 0.75% rise in the number of companies run by Italians, Unioncamere added. In absolute terms Lombardy was the region with the highest number of immigrant-owned companies (114,000), followed by Lazio (77,000) and Tuscany (55,000).
    However, Prato in Tuscany remained the city with the highest percentage of foreign companies 827.8%), followed by Trieste (16%) and Florence (15.8%).
    In Milan the percentage was 14.4% and in Rome it was 13.4%. In 2017 the southern region of Campania registered the largest growth in foreign businesses, at 6.1%, followed by the Marches (4.5%) and Lazio (4.3%). The only region with a negative balance was Sicily, with 2,057 companies closing and 1,888 opening. In absolute terms foreign companies had the largest presence in the retail sector, followed by food and catering. However, the largest concentration was to be found in the telecommunications sector, with foreign companies representing 33.6% of the total, and in clothes manufacturing at 30%. The largest national group to own and run a company in Italy was Morocco, followed by China and Romania. According to the most recent figures from 2016 the 2.4 million immigrants regularly employed in Italy accounted for 130.87 billion euros of GDP (8.9% of the total) and payed approximately 7 billion euros in taxes. The previous year they paid 11.5 billion euros in social security contributions.