Relatively few foreign students go on to set up their own business after graduating, new figures from the national statistics office CBS show.

Of the 5,500 foreign students who graduated from a Dutch university in 2010, four years later 35% were still in the Netherlands and 24% were in paid jobs.

But by 2017, just 6% of them had set up their own businesses, compared with 18% of their Dutch peers, the CBS said.

Foreign-born students at Dutch universities in those years most often hailed from either Germany or China. Of the German students, 26% remained in the Netherlands after seven years, and 18% were working. More than 4% of the Germans staying had set up businesses, the CBS said.

These were most likely to be in the healthcare and educational sectors.

The government estimates some 25% of foreign student graduates will remain in the Netherlands permanently.