Azerbaijan, Baku, 17 May/ Trend/
Iran needs $240 billion a year to increase economic growth to 8 percent, ISNA reported quoting Iran Economy and Finance Minister Shams-Aldin Hosseini as saying.
"Iran mobilized $150 billion last solar year (ended March 20, 2010), but the country still needs more financial resources to achieve the eight-percent economic growth," he said.
More than 2.5 million Iranians are unemployed, while 900,000 jobless enter the labor market a year.
The International Monetary Fund forecasted zero-percent economic growth in Iran in 2011.
The Iranian Statistics Agency reported that unemployment rate hit 14.6 percent in spring 2010. However, in late March Iranian Labor and Social Affairs Minister Abdol Reza Sheikh-Ol-Eslami said quoting Ahmadinejad that unemployment rate hit 10 percent.
Iran includes those working even an hour a week into the list of employed people. According to international standards, employed person should have minimum 48 work hours a week.