Azerbaijan, Baku, May.12/ Trend F.Karimov/
The administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has failed to meet its obligations regarding job creation and reducing jobless rate, so that there are still about three million people without job in the country, the Mehr News Agency reported.
Government officials had claimed to uproot unemployment in the country by the end of Mr. Ahmadinejad's term of office in August.
The government paid around 280 trillion rials (about $23 billion) to thousands of job creation plans, but reports says that over 60 percent of job creation goals plans were not materialized.
Based on the Statistics Center of Iran, the number of jobless people was around 2.674 million in the calendar year 1384 (March 2005-March 2006), but the figure rose to 2.944 in the year 1391 (March 2012-March 2013).
According to Etemad Persian language daily, the administration had pledged to create 2.5 million jobs in the past Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20.
Iran's high council of employment has announced that it plans to create 1.1 million jobs in the current year.
Iran's fifth five-year economic development plan (2010-2015) has envisaged creating 1.1 million jobs per year.
Persons aged 20-24 years are the most unemployed group in Iran with the unemployment rate of 29.8 percent.
In December 2011, Iranian deputy finance and economic affairs minister Behrouz Alishiri said that Iran needs up to $300 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) annually by 2015 to attain 8 percent economic growth rate.
Meanwhile, Tehran Chamber of Commerce director Yahya Al-e Es'haq has said that Iran's economic growth rate should be increased to 5 percent from currently minus 1 in order to help resolve many economic problems.
"We are facing challenges, such as high inflation and unemployment rates. Such problems should be addressed," he noted.
If the economic growth rate reaches five or six percent, all the challenges will be turned into opportunities, he said.
The International Monetary Fund said on April 16 that Iran's economy contracted by 1.9% in 2012 and is expected to shrink by 1.3% this year as it reels from the impact of Western sanctions.
The economy of the Islamic republic is, however, forecast to grow next year by 1.1%, the IMF said in its annual World Economic Outlook.
The IMF said the "macroeconomic environment is likely to remain difficult, given the sharp depreciation of the currency and adverse external conditions, which would sustain inflation at relatively high levels."
A Western ban on Iranian oil exports, which came into effect in July, hit the country's economy badly.