TREVISO-BELLUNO – Infocamere has made the data available of business demographics in the first quarter of 2024, and as with previous monitoring, the comparison on an annual basis is affected by an important administrative procedure with which, in the third quarter of 2023, a significant number of individual companies were canceled from the Business Register (over 1,600 in Treviso and almost 180 in Belluno for failure to complete management acts in the last three years, pursuant to Presidential Decree no. 247/200.
The comment by President Mario Pozza: “Since, as has been said several times, the dynamics of corporate demography is affected by administrative factors, which have little or nothing to do with the economic cycle, with this foresight, the results net of this legal form, for a subset of businesses which represents 46% in Treviso and 40% in Belluno of the total businesses and 80% of the employees, they see a decrease of -279 businesses in Treviso, in clear contrast with the corresponding period of last year when instead the same subset grew by +266 units. The decline lies in the more pronounced declines in manufacturing (wooden furniture and metalworking) and in wholesale and retail trade, in catering, in ICT services and in real estate agencies of -58 locations, more accentuated than that recorded exactly one year ago when the variation was -15 locations, is linked to the reversal of the trend in construction (from +11 to -9 locations) and accommodation facilities, in addition to the decline in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, catering.
The Research Office has tried to delve deeper into some structural indicators through which to verify whether and with what intensity our entrepreneurial fabric is being renewed.
The following evidence emerges from the data:
– a general decline in the flow of registrations over the decade, which is common to almost all the territories, not just Treviso and Belluno. The decrease for Belluno is -15%, in line with the national average, for Treviso it is -7.3%;
the entrepreneurial propensity (given by the ratio between business registrations and adult population) is in line with the Venetian average for Treviso and is equal to 0.85 registered businesses per 100 inhabitants, while Belluno is below the regional figure and of good part of the Italian provinces;
– youth businesses see a largely positive balance between registrations and terminations in the period considered, but it is a result that is only partially sufficient, for Treviso and Belluno (and for most of the Italian provinces) to compensate for the share of businesses that passed through the subset of “non-youth” businesses for the owner or the majority of the partners/administrators reaching or exceeding 35 years of age. One fact above all: the percentage incidence of youth teams in Belluno was 9.2% ten years ago, now it has dropped to 8%, in Treviso it goes from 7.9% in 2014 to 7.3% in 2023;
– finally, from the analysis of the turnover rate for individual businesses it is observed that the weight of the cohorts of entrepreneurs aged 65 and over has gone from 16.4% in 2014 to 19.9% in 2023 for Treviso, and from 10.8% in 2014 to 14% in 2023 for Belluno. The sectors where the weight of “over” entrepreneurs is greatest are in particular agriculture and manufacturing (metalworking and for Treviso also wood furnishings).
The recent dynamics: reading notes and main evidence
In previous reports, extensive emphasis was given to the automatic cancellation, which occurred during 2023, of over 1,600 individual businesses in the province of Treviso, and of almost 180 individual businesses in the province of Belluno. Cancellations which, on a technical level, were carried out pursuant to Presidential Decree no. 247/200, due to failure by these companies to complete management documents in the last three years. In the same reports (available on the chamber’s website at the following link) the different types of businesses that found themselves in the position of being canceled and the sectors most affected by the phenomenon were highlighted. We will not go back to this aspect again. The fact remains of the lack of these individual companies, which generates an important discontinuity in the historical series of data. This has consequences: at least for the whole of 2024, if no further “clean-ups” occur, it is no longer practicable to compare the overall stock of companies on an annual basis, which would otherwise be totally flawed for administrative reasons, which have nothing to do with the economic situation. A correct annual comparison must only analyze companies not affected by the official terminations, therefore having a different legal form from a sole proprietorship.
With this cautionfor the province of Treviso the annual variation in the stock of active companies to be taken into consideration, between March 2023 and March 2024, is not -1,826 units, but -279 units: this, we reiterate for clarity, with reference to all active businesses having a legal form other than a sole proprietorship, subset which represents 45.6% of the total (and 81.6% in terms of employees). This variation, in any case, is in clear contrast to what was recorded between March 2022 and March 2023 (+266 units), for this same subset of companies. The reasons can be traced back to more pronounced declines in manufacturing (-126 locations, especially in the wood, furniture and mechanical sectors), in wholesale (-77) and retail trade (-50), in catering (-82) , in ICT services (-48), in real estate agencies (which lost 67 offices in the period considered compared to +77 in the previous year).
Also for the province of Belluno the above applies: between March 2023 and March 2024 it is not correct to say that Belluno will lose 270 active business locations; looking only at the companies not affected by the official terminations, having a different legal form from the sole proprietorship (weight of 40.3% of the total, 80.4% in terms of employees), the variation in the period considered is -58 units .
It is a little more pronounced than the weak decline of -15 units recorded between March 2022 and March 2023 mainly due to negative trend reversals for construction (-9 locations compared to +11 last year) and activities hospitality (-6 locations compared to +4), as well as greater closures in trade, both wholesale and retail (-24 locations the most recent decline, compared to -5 between March 2022 and March 2023). This discontinuity in the numbers created by the official terminations also affects artisan businesses, which at the end of December 2023 were 28.4% of the total Treviso businesses (for a size of 22,063 units) and 33.9% of those in Belluno ( equal in absolute values to 4,537 companies). In comparison with March 2023, Treviso artisan businesses decreased by -569 units: net of individual businesses, the decrease is -43 units. Belluno’s artisan businesses overall decreased by -58 units on an annual basis, and by -16 units net of individual businesses. The employee units (branches) continue to grow both in the province of Treviso (+180 units on an annual basis) and in the province of Belluno (+59). At the end of September there were 19,138 local units active in the province of Treviso and 4,614 branches active in the province of Belluno.
