Wholesale trade generated €5.2 billion in Monaco in 2025, more than a quarter of the Principality’s economy outside financial services and its largest single sector by revenue. And while turnover slipped over the year, the sector held up far better than the rest of the economy.

Figures published by IMSEE, Monaco’s statistics institute, show wholesale trade revenue fell 3.1% in 2025. That was a modest decline set against the 7.6% drop recorded across the rest of the Principality’s non-financial economy. The sector’s turnover reached a historic peak of €6.1 billion in 2022 and has eased back in each of the three years since, though it remains comfortably above pre-pandemic levels of around €4.8 billion.

A pillar of the Monaco economy

Beyond revenue, wholesale trade is one of the Principality’s largest sectors by any measure. It counted 1,344 active businesses in 2025, around a 10th of all Monaco companies and the third-highest of the 14 sectors the institute tracks, and employed 2,792 people. More than half of those businesses are private limited companies, many of them in yachting and aviation, which together account for around 15% of the sector.

What moved the numbers

The year’s decline was led by wholesale conducted on a fee or contract basis, down 3.4%, within which fuels, ores, metals and chemicals fell sharply, by 21.9%. Wholesale of food, beverages and tobacco dropped 9.8%. Offsetting some of that, wholesale of household goods rose 4.5%, driven by pharmaceutical and medical products.

The workforce

Employment in the sector rose 1.4% to 2,792 in 2025, with 413 employers. Its workforce is unusually balanced for Monaco: men and women were split almost evenly, at 51.5% and 48.5%, against a private-sector average that skews heavily male. As across the Principality, most employees are French (61.7%) or Italian (19.9%), with 28 Monegasques, and more than three-quarters live in France, though a higher-than-average 15% live in Monaco itself.

The figures come under a new European classification of economic activities, in force in Monaco since the start of 2026, which means they are not directly comparable with those in earlier reports.

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Photo credit: Benjamin Vergely, Department of Tourism