(ANSA) - ROMA, 18 GIU - With almost 650 thousand businesses, 10.7 percent of the total, at the end of March 2022 foreign entrepreneurship confirmed itself as a structural component of the Italian business fabric, present in 94 percent of Italian municipalities and able to cross unscathed - expanding its perimeter - the Covid emergency. In fact, between the end of March 2020 and March 31 of this year, the number of businesses led by people born outside the national borders grew by 54 thousand units (+8.7 percent against an average growth of total businesses of 2.3 percent during the period). This is what emerges from data from the Chambers of Commerce Business Registry processed by Unioncamere-InfoCamere in the period from March 31, 2020, coinciding with the start of the health emergency phase - and March 31 of this year, Acting as a driving force, as for the rest of the country's business fabric, were incentives for the rehabilitation of the built heritage: 39 percent of all the increase in the number of businesses of foreigners was in fact registered in the construction sector (+20,974 units). Growth is led by Romania and Albania, but Nigerian and Pakistani businesses are also increasing significantly. "Businesses run by people of foreign origin represent an increasingly consolidated reality in our country," stresses Unioncamere President Andrea Prete. "It is, however, a business that usually starts small, unstructured, an expression of the skills of the individual and the opportunities of the market. The substantial flows of immigrants arriving in our country I think will continue to fuel this dynamic and thus the further spread of the foreign entrepreneurial fabric, which is a growth factor for the entire national economy. These businesses, however, must be helped to strengthen themselves and fully integrate into the Italian productive and social fabric." (ANSA).