Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 9/ Trend F.Milad/
Iran aims to create 1.1 million jobs in the current calendar year which ends on March 20, 2013, Deputy Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare minister Mohammad Hossein Forouzanmehr said, ISNA reported.
"Iran also plans to keep over 2.3 million job opportunities which have been previously created," Forouzanmehr said.
Iranian Cooperatives, Labour, and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami had previously said that the unemployment rate is planned to be cut to seven per cent by the end of the fifth socio-economic development plan (March 2016). To this end, 5.5 million new jobs should be created, he noted.
According to Sheikholeslami, Iran's High Council of Employment has approved allocating 45 trillion rials (some $37 billion) to job creation plans in the current calendar year.
A member of Iran's High Council of Employment Davoud Qaderi also said in June that the council developed a package of investment plans, worth 1.96 trillion rials (some $160 billion), aimed to create job opportunities in the current calendar year.
The unemployment rate in Iran stood at 12.3 per cent in the past calendar year, showing a 1.2 per cent fall compared to its preceding year, the Statistical Centre of Iran reported.
Some 400,000 people have been employed in Iran in the last calendar year which ended on March 19, while the government has announced that over 1.6 million job opportunities were created last year, the Mehr News Agency reported on June 12.
The Statistics Centre of Iran has said that 1.4 million jobs have been certainly been created last year.
Meanwhile, the Welfare and Social Security Ministry has put the figure at around 1.6 million.
Iranian first vice president Mohammadreza Rahimi said that the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created jobs as much as twice the figure it had promised during the past two years.
On May 16, IRNA quoted Mohammadreza Rahimi as saying that the government had been obliged to create 1.1 million jobs, but it created 1.5 million jobs in 2011.
Rahimi added that if non-Iranian workers leave the country, the jobless rate will not exceed one or two per cent.