The 2022 financial year seems to have come with new energy for the business fabric of the province of Alicante, which is recovering its entrepreneurial spirit. Although the creation of new companies has experienced a positive behaviour in the first quarter of the year, which gives continuity to the post-pandemic recovery at the end of 2021, the province of Alicante stands out especially both in the Valencian Community as a whole and in Spain.
This is reflected in the data from the mercantile statistics for the first quarter of 2022, prepared by the College of Registrars. According to official data from the Mercantile Registry, the Valencian Community incorporated 3,507 new commercial companies in the first quarter of the year, which represents a growth of 7.9% compared to the same period of the previous year.
That is, the growth in the creation of companies in the Community doubles the national growth, which stands at 3.6%. And within these figures, Alicante has a special role, with 1,505 new merchants, 14.6% more. In other words, the birth of companies in the province grows four times more than in Spain.
The province not only significantly improves the regional and national trend in terms of the start-up of new business projects, but the same happens in terms of investment in consolidated projects. Thus, Alicante registered 306 capital increases in the first quarter, 5.9% more than in the same period of 2021 (289 increases).
In the Valencia Community, the increase in these operations (954) is 2.7%, while in the whole of Spain there is a decrease in extensions of 0.2%. The capital disbursed in these 306 operations amounts to 206 million euro, which represents an average investment of 675,000 euro per operation.
At the same time, Alicante shows, on the contrary, a worse behaviour than the average in terms of company dissolutions, according to the mercantile statistics of the Registrars. From January to March, a total of 439 mercantile companies were dissolved in the province, 26.5% more than the same quarter last year.
In the Valencia Community, the increase was 14.5%, driven especially by Castellón. It seems that in this sense the province continues to suffer from the increase in dissolutions motivated by the health crisis that was already felt in 2021, as stated in the latest Ineca situation report.
On the other hand, the number of companies in the Valencian Community immersed in insolvency proceedings during the first quarter of 2022 amounts to 209, which shows a rise of 6.1% and places it as the third community with the most insolvencies, only behind from Madrid (320) and Catalonia (271). During this time, Alicante registered 57, Castellón 41 and Valencia 111.
In all of Spain, 1,212 were registered, 5% more than in the first quarter of 2021. In this sense, the behaviour of the Valencia Community is somewhat worse than that of Spain.
The Valencian Community, on the other hand, recovers positions in terms of the balance of entry and exit of companies. Thus, during the first quarter of the year a total of 109 companies left the Valencian Community for other regions and another 141 landed here, which gives a positive balance of +32.
It is in fact the second-best balance recorded among all communities, only surpassed by Madrid (+66). The Valencian Community is in turn the fourth region from which more companies left, and the fourth to which more Spanish companies moved their headquarters.
