Slowdown in Marche businesses: a quarter of -746

ANCONA There are no good signs for the Marche economy from the latest quarterly update of Movimprese, the report with which the Chambers of Commerce keep accounts of the births and deaths of businesses in the area. In the first three months of this year, registrations (2,682) were unable to keep pace with terminations (3,428) with a balance of -746 which reduces the stock of businesses registered as of March 31st to 148,356. In the last year before the Coronavirus health emergency, just to give an idea of ​​how difficult it is to recover from that blow to the economy weakened by lockdowns and social restrictions, the entrepreneurial fabric of the Marche region was made up of 168,396 businesses. From the end of December 2019 to today, the Marche region has lost over twenty thousand economic activities.

Negative balances

And if it is true that the first quarter historically frequently records negative balances, especially due to the concentration of a high number of business closures at the end of the year, the Marche region suffers from this phenomenon more than is the case on average at a national level. The rate of decline recorded by the Marche entrepreneurial fabric in the first quarter of 2024 (-0.49%) is decidedly higher than the national average (-0.18%) and drags the Marche into fourth place among the regions with the worst performance in terms of rate of business growth, better only than Molise (-0.80%), Umbria (-0.74%) and Abruzzo (-0.59%).

A decline that affects the entire regional territory, given that the quarterly balance between registrations and terminations is negative in all five provinces. The Fermo area suffers the sharpest slowdown, with a quarterly growth rate of -0.69% (359 businesses founded and 491 closed), followed by the province of Ancona with -0.59% (720 registrations and 956 closures) by Macerata with -0.44% (605 and 757), Pesaro Urbino with -0.42% (614 and 768) and Ascoli Piceno with -0.32% (384 registrations and 456 terminations).

The driving effect of the powerful injections of European funds with which the Marche Region, through tenders with contributions and benefits, seeks to support regional entrepreneurship is still struggling to be felt.

The regional tender

Just the day before yesterday Palazzo Raffaello announced the approval of the rankings of the “Research and development to innovate the Marche” tender in implementation of the Pr Marche Fesr 2021-2027. For the financing of the projects, given the intense participation, the Marche Region has allocated a total of 54.6 million euros, i.e. the entire allocation foreseen by the Pr FESR financial plan for the implementation of the intervention, adding 9.6 million euros to the allocation announced (45 million euros). Investments in industrial research and experimental development are expected for a total of 92.5 million euros in the regional territory, distributed among 96 projects eligible for financing which will be carried out by companies.

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