The pandemic is holding back the birth rate of businesses. At the end of March, more than a year after the start of the pandemic, an estimate of the failure to set up businesses was 63,000. The uncertainties of the economic scenario, including expectations on the evolution of the pandemic and relaunch prospects linked to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), also affect cancellations, which are slowing down. This is what emerges from the photograph taken by Unioncamere – InfoCamere on the official data on the birth and death rates of Italian companies in the first quarter of 2021.
Registrations between January and March amounted to 103,597. Despite a timid rebound signal, which comes to terms with a first quarter of 2020 strongly conditioned by the start of the pandemic season (with the stop of all activities for the entire month of March), the balance of registrations that is found by comparing the thirteen months from the beginning of March 2020 to the end of March 2021 with the corresponding period placed outside the pandemic (between 2018 and 2019) marks a volume of registrations of new companies estimated at around 63 thousand fewer units.
The data confirm the strong relationship between the climate of confidence and the birth rate of companies and highlight the significant discouragement in starting new activities that characterized much of this period.