Businesses open and close across the county

Of the North’s 11 council areas, recent statistics revealed that it was one of Tyrone’s three districts that recorded the fewest ‘business deaths’ in 2021.

Statistics detailing the number of businesses that opened or closed in 2021 have shown that Mid Ulster – the district comprising of Dungannon, Cookstown and, among other places, Coalisland – continued to have the lowest ‘business death rate’ (5.7 per-cent) across the North.

This was the seventh consecutive year that figures from the Department of the Economy showed that Mid Ulster experienced the smallest number of business closures.

But, while the east Tyrone district did record a remarkably low number of closures, they saw fewer businesses birthed than Tyrone’s other two districts.

Mid Ulster had an 8.8 per-cent birth rate, compared to a marginally higher, 8.9 per-cent in Fermanagh and Omagh. However, it was Derry and Strabane that seen the most new businesses formed with a 10 per-cent rise.

Meanwhile, Fermanagh and Omagh had a business death rate of 6.1 per-cent, while Derry and Strabane had a growth of 7.7 per-cent.

The picture which emerges from the numbers is one of business birth rates increasing in every district across Tyrone, and this trend extends across the North, with the exception of Antrim and Newtownabbey.

The report also showed the survival rate of businesses that were opened in 2016. It done this, simply, by checking how many businesses which originally opened in 2016 were still trading last year.

Of the 440 that opened in Fermanagh and Omagh in 2016, 225 survived until the time figures were recorded in 2021.

In Mid Ulster, 265 of the 520 launched in 2016 were still in existence last year. And in Derry and Strabane, of the 450 businesses that had their inception in 2016, 395 remained part of the market in 2021.