Mining dominates foreign-owned industries

The Australian mining industry has the nation's greatest proportion of businesses that are foreign-owned.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show 9946 business in Australia were foreign-owned in 2014/15, comprising 0.5 per cent of all companies.

That is up from 0.4 per cent five years earlier.

In the mining industry, however, 474 businesses were foreign-owned, accounting for 5.9 per cent of all companies in the sector.

The wholesale trade industry had the highest actual number of foreign-owned operations at 1909, making up 2.5 per cent of the sector.

United States residents were best represented among foreign businesses owners, the new data shows, holding 2039 businesses.

United Kingdom residents held the second-greatest number of companies (842), followed by Japan (538) and New Zealand (420).

Although foreign-owned business account for just 0.5 per cent of Australian operations, they are responsible for more than a fifth of the value of goods and services produced in the country, minus production costs.

They made a 20.8 per cent contribution to that metric in 2014/15, known as industry value added, up from 18.4 per cent in 2010/11.