Northern Ireland has been ranked the fifth most entrepreneurial area in the UK, according to research from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and insurance firm, NimbleFins.
NI was found to have 569 small businesses for every 10,000 working people aged 16 to 70, based on 73,775 small businesses in 2019.
Overall, three parliamentary constituencies from Northern Ireland made the top 50 in the UK, with the highest being Fermanagh and South Tyrone, which had a score of 981 small businesses for every 10,000 working-age individuals.
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This was followed by West Tyrone, Mid Ulster, and Newry and Armagh.
The lowest entrepreneurial constituency was West Belfast, with 253 small businesses for every 10,000 working-age people.
Overall in the UK, London was found to be the most entrepreneurial region, with Wales being the least.
This data took into consideration businesses with 0-49 employees, but does not consider the number of very small businesses that are not registered for VAT or PAYE.
Please find the full methodology at the end of the data study.
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Today (08 October) NISRA also published findings which indicate that whilst Northern Ireland’s economic activity had been increasing gradually in recent years following the prolonged downturn post 2007; in the second quarter of 2020 this fell to an all-time series low.
The Northern Ireland Composite Economic Index (NICEI) estimates that output in the NI economy declined at a slower rate than that experienced by the UK economy over the quarter (13.6% for NI against 19.8% for the UK) and over the year (17.8% for NI against 21.5% for the UK) to Q2 2020.
However, on a slightly longer timeframe, NI economic output decreased by 5.1% over the last two years compared to growth of 5.4% reported for the UK.
The level of economic activity in NI currently sits 20.8% below the maximum value recorded in Q2 2007 whilst UK GDP is estimated to be 11.5% lower than its pre-economic downturn peak.
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