Italy has seen a net loss of almost 305,000 businesses due to COVID-19 in 2020, retail group Confcommercio said Monday.
This is a fall of 11.3%, it said.
The fall was due to a COVID-linked 10.8% drop in consumer spending.
Spending was down 120 billion euros on 2019, Confcommercio said.
Over 390,000 non-food retail and service firms have closed their doors this year, while some 85,000 new businesses have opened up.
The end of a government COVID firing freeze risks seeing more than 10% of jobs in small and medium businesses disappearing, a report from the retail group's labour consultants said.
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