Azerbaijan, Baku, Mar. 12/ Trend F.Milad/
Iran's Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare Ministry is planning to pay 50-million-rial (some $4000) loans to breadwinner women in two provinces to support them to find jobs, Mehr news agency reported.
For the time being, some 38,000 breadwinner women are in line to receive the supporting financial facilities, the report added.
Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami has said that the country plans to cut its unemployment rate to seven per cent by the end of 2012 in line with the fifth socio-economic development plan (2010-2015).
The unemployment rate in Iran stood at 13.5 per cent in the past calendar year, which ended on March 20, 2011, showing a 1.6 per cent rise compared to the figure for the preceding year, the Statistical Centre of Iran reported.
The report puts the country's jobless population during the third quarter of the current calendar year at over 2.6 million, according to Mehr news agency.
To keep the current unemployment rate steady, some $200 billion should be invested to create one million jobs annually, the Iranian vice Majlis speaker said in January. The nation's working population was 25 million in the previous calendar year.