Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.11
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran spends $25 billion to $28 billion annually on welfare projects, but positive effects of such large projects have not been considerable, Iranian Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare Minister Ali Rabiei, said.
Rabiei, said some 9 million Iranians are illiterate and over 150,000 children have left schools, Iran's IRNA news agency reported on Nov. 11.
"Moreover, a portion of the population is suffering from food and health deficiencies," Rabiei said.
The administration pays more than $6 billion in aid to two pension funds, he added.
USD exchange rate in Iran is currently 32,500 rials.
In August, Rabiei said one million jobs should be created per year to resolve the unemployment crisis in the country.
He added that 500,000 jobs will be created in the country by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2015).
In its World Economic Outlook for the month of October, the International Monetary Fund has projected 2.2 percent real GDP growth for the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2015, dropping it from the 2.3 percent that was predicted in its April report.
Iran's real GDP growth picked up in 2014 with 1.5 percent growth and is expected to grow further by 2.2 percent in 2015, after two years of negative economic growth.
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