Quarrying and real estate firms in Malta top ‘high-growth’ business rankings

Malta tops EU ranking for high-growth enterprises seeing constant increase in staff complement

High-growth enterprises in the EU are more predominant in the service sectors than in the rest of the business economy in 2014
High-growth enterprises in the EU are more predominant in the service sectors than in the rest of the business economy in 2014

Malta comes out tops in a ranking of ‘high-growth enterprises’ the EU: businesses which start off with just 10 employees and are then recognised specifically for growing in staff by over 10% over a three-year period.

“High-growth enterprises play an important role in contributing to economic growth and the creation of jobs,” Eurostat, which collected the data, said. In 2014, around 145,000 companies, or almost a tenth (9.2%) of all active enterprises with at least ten employees in the business economy in the EU were recognized as high-growth enterprises, providing work for over 12 million employees.

In 2014, considerable variations were observed across EU Member States in the distribution of high-growth enterprises, with shares ranging from more than 12% in Malta (13.7%), the United Kingdom (12.9%), Latvia (12.8%), Ireland (12.6%), Sweden (12.3%) and Hungary (12.1%), to less than 3% in Romania (2.3%) and Cyprus (2.2%).

High-growing enterprises have a noteworthy impact on employment. In 2014, the highest contributions of high-growth enterprises to the total number of employees were recorded in the United Kingdom (19.3%), Ireland (19.1%), Bulgaria (18.0%), Hungary (17.9%), Malta (17.5%) and Latvia (17.4%). In contrast, the lowest share was registered in Cyprus (3.6%), followed at a distance by Romania (6.7%) and Slovenia (8.2%).

High-growth enterprises in the EU are more predominant in the service sectors than in the rest of the business economy in 2014. The highest proportion was found in the “Information and communication“ sector (15.0% of active enterprises in this sector), followed by “Administrative and support service activities” (12.7%). With such a large variety of different incorporation services, it is important to pick the right one. Read more about some of the top online incorporation services.

But in Malta, the main areas of this business growth were in ‘mining and quarrying’, ‘information and communication’, and ‘real estate’.

More specifically, in 2014 high-growth enterprises were particularly concentrated within "Information and communication". This sector was registered among the top 3 economic branches in 23 Member States, with the highest percentages being observed in Malta (22.3%), Ireland (19.9%), the United Kingdom (18.6%), Sweden (18.2%) and the Netherlands (17.6%).