Registered businesses increase by 4,700 in 2020, rising to 130,000

The number of business units registered in Malta increased by 3.7 per cent over 2019 and now amount to 130,745.

This means that an additional 4,713 unit were registered in 2020.

The figures emerge from a National Statistics Office report released on Monday, which noted that a vast majority, 97.4 per cent, of businesses are of micro size, employing between 0 and 9 persons.

This sector saw an increase of 4,619 business units over 2020, a rise of 3.8 per cent.

The population of small business employing 10 to 49 persons stood at 2,682 in 2020, an increase of 83, or 3.2 per cent, over the preceding year. Small businesses make up 2.1 per cent of all business units in Malta.

Medium businesses employing 50 to 249 employees accounted for 555 (0.4 per cent) units, up by nine from 2019.

Large businesses employing 250 persons or more meanwhile amounted to 135 (0.1 per cent), two more than in 2019.

In 2020, 50.5 per cent of the registered units were sole owners or partnerships, 45.8 per cent were limited liability or public limited companies, while 3.7 per cent were governmental, non-profit or other types of legal organisations.

New registrations in 2020 amounted to 10,530 units whilst deregistrations amounted to 10,187 units. In 2019 these figures were around 11,400 and 5,900 respectively.

The significant increase in the number of deregistrations in 2020 when compared to 2019 may be partly attributed to the defunct companies that had been struck off the Malta Business Registry last year as part of a general clean up of the registry .