In 2024, the value added generated by foreign-controlled enterprises reached \u20ac196 billion (+4.1% compared with the previous year). Growth was driven by the services sector (+6.7%), while industry (excluding construction) recorded a slight decline
(-0.7%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The importance of foreign multinationals in Italy\u2019s international trade is highest in the pharmaceutical industry (60.2% of exports and 71.3% of imports) and motor vehicles (52.9% and 69.5%, respectively). Inward foreign multinationals also account for a large majority (68.8%) of intra-group imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
45.5% of the workforce and 36.9% of the turnover of Italian multinationals are located abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For 75% of Italian multinationals, access to new markets is the main reason for investing abroad. Commercial agreements and joint ventures are also widely used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2024, foreign-controlled multinational enterprises (MNEs) continued to strengthen their presence in Italy, both in terms of employment and productivity, while Italian multinationals further consolidated their operations abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Originating from 108 countries, foreign MNEs operated in Italy through 19,321 affiliates (+2.6% compared with 2023), employing more than 1.9 million people (+3.8%), generating \u20ac871 billion in turnover (-1.8%), producing nearly \u20ac196 billion in value added (+4.1%), and spending over \u20ac7 billion on intramural R&D (+10.7%). Growth in value added was entirely driven by services (+6.7%), whereas the increase in R&D expenditure was mainly attributable to manufacturing (+14.0%), compared with services (+2.6%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although they account for only 0.4% of all resident enterprises in Italy, foreign multinationals further strengthened their contribution to key economic aggregates in industry and services. They employed 10.1% of the workforce (+0.3 percentage points compared with 2023), generated 17.8% of total value added (+0.3 p.p.), and accounted for 41.2% of business R&D expenditure (+2.9 p.p.). Turnover was the only exception, declining slightly to 21.0% (-0.1 p.p.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italian multinationals also expanded abroad, operating through 26,935 foreign affiliates (+6.6% compared with 2023) in 175 countries. These affiliates employed nearly 1.8 million people (+4.4%) and generated \u20ac576 billion in turnover (+2.9%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In manufacturing, the sectors contributing most to the growth of Italian MNEs abroad were other transport equipment (+21.4% employment and +30.4% turnover), wood, paper and printing (+33.8% and +22.9%), rubber and plastics (+5.4% and +10.3%), and food and beverages (+4.3% and +9.9%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In services, the strongest expansion was recorded in professional, scientific and technical activities (+19.3% employment and +107.7% turnover), information and communication services (+6.3% and +11.5%), and transportation and warehousing (+7.1% and +9.3%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Considering the overall activities of Italian-controlled multinationals, both in Italy and abroad, foreign operations accounted for 45.5% of total employment and generated 36.9% of total turnover. The share of employees located abroad was higher in industry than in services (47.2% versus 43.8%), while the opposite was true for turnover (31.0% versus 45.9%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The industrial sectors with the highest incidence of activities carried out abroad by Italian multinationals were mining and quarrying (92.8% of employment and 97.2% of turnover), rubber and plastics (60.2% and 44.8%), electrical equipment (57.8% and 51.4%), and pharmaceuticals (53.9% and 37.7%). Among non-financial services, the highest shares were recorded in rental and business support services (51.0% and 45.4%) and trade (46.6% and 42.8%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A marked size differential between multinational enterprise groups and non-multinational enterprises is confirmed. Resident enterprises belonging to Italian multinational enterprise groups employ, on average, 101 persons, while foreign-controlled affiliates in Italy employ 98.6 persons and foreign affiliates of Italian multinational enterprises 66.5 persons, compared with just 3.6 persons employed on average by non-multinational enterprises. This substantial gap is also reflected in labour productivity levels: value added per person employed amounts to \u20ac102.8 thousand for foreign-controlled affiliates, compared with \u20ac64.9 thousand for non-multinational enterprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2024, exports of goods generated by foreign-controlled enterprises amounted to almost \u20ac200 billion
(-1.7% compared with 2023), while imports of goods, at nearly \u20ac220 billion, recorded a larger decline
(-3.7%). Foreign-controlled enterprises accounted for 35.4% of total Italian exports of goods and generated 49.3% of total imports of goods (down 0.4 percentage points compared with 2023 in both cases). Intra-group trade represented 45.4% of exports and 68.8% of imports of foreign-controlled enterprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The contribution of foreign-controlled enterprises to international trade was particularly significant in the manufacture of pharmaceutical products (60.2% of exports and 71.3% of imports), motor vehicles (52.9% and 69.5%, respectively), computers, electronic and optical products (45.9% and 52.6%), and chemicals and chemical products (42.9% and 49.1%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foreign affiliates of Italian multinational enterprises exported 38.2% of their turnover, with the highest shares recorded in the manufacture of leather and related products (90.2%), computers, electronic and optical products (75.6%), and furniture and other manufacturing activities (74.9%). High export shares directed to Italy were also observed in traditional Made in Italy industries: 50.8% in the manufacture of leather and related products, 45.3% in textiles, wearing apparel and leather products, and 33.3% in computers, electronic and optical products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foreign-controlled affiliates operating in Italy originate predominantly from the European Union, accounting for 57.7% of all foreign-controlled enterprises (+0.3 percentage points compared with 2023). European-controlled affiliates also make a substantial contribution in terms of persons employed (56.6%) and turnover (54.0%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ranked by persons employed, France became the leading country of control for foreign-controlled affiliates in Italy for the first time, with 2,662 enterprises and more than 366 thousand persons employed. French-controlled affiliates accounted for 17.6% of turnover, 18.8% of value added and 8.9% of intramural R&D expenditure. They overtook the United States, whose affiliates comprised 2,564 enterprises and almost 363 thousand persons employed, generating 17.7% of turnover, 22.2% of value added and 24.0% of intramural R&D expenditure. Germany ranked third, with 2,739 enterprises and more than 241 thousand persons employed, accounting for 14.1% of turnover, 12.4% of value added and 8.8% of intramural R&D expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The European Union also remained the main location area for foreign affiliates of Italian multinational enterprise groups, although its importance declined compared with 2023. EU countries hosted 47.5% of foreign affiliates (-1.2 percentage points), 41.5% of persons employed (-0.8 percentage points) and 49.9% of turnover (-2.7 percentage points) generated abroad by Italian-controlled affiliates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top ten host countries for foreign affiliates of Italian multinational enterprise groups accounted for 60.7% of enterprises, 59.3% of persons employed and 62.3% of turnover generated abroad. Likewise, the top ten countries of ultimate controlling institutional units of foreign-controlled affiliates in Italy accounted for more than 80% of persons employed, turnover, value added and intramural R&D expenditure generated by foreign-controlled affiliates operating in Italy.is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2024, the value added generated by foreign-controlled enterprises reached \u20ac196 billion (+4.1% compared with the previous year)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4082],"tags":[3467,3225,3508,3278,3165,2969,3696],"regione":[],"tema":[4057,4067],"class_list":["post-140170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-enterprises","tag-exports","tag-internationalisation","tag-manufacturing","tag-multinational-enterprises","tag-report","tag-structure-and-competitiveness","tema-enterprises","tema-industry-and-construction"],"meta_fields":{"data_pubblicazione":"","descrizioneperiodo":"","titolobreve":"","news":"","news_rss":"","sottotitolo":""},"acf":[],"wpml_current_locale":"en_US","wpml_translations":[],"tags-info":[{"id":3467,"label":"enterprises","slug":"enterprises"},{"id":3225,"label":"exports","slug":"exports"},{"id":3508,"label":"internationalisation","slug":"internationalisation"},{"id":3278,"label":"manufacturing","slug":"manufacturing"},{"id":3165,"label":"multinational enterprises","slug":"multinational-enterprises"},{"id":2969,"label":"statistics report","slug":"report"},{"id":3696,"label":"structure and competitiveness","slug":"structure-and-competitiveness"}],"categories-info":[{"id":4082,"label":"Press release","slug":"press-release"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140170"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140584,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140170\/revisions\/140584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140170"},{"taxonomy":"regione","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regione?post=140170"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=140170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}