Iran plans to create 1.3m jobs by March 2013

TEHRAN,Dec.3(MNA) - Iran plans to create 2.1 million jobs by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, which ends on March 2013, but just 1.3 million jobs will be likely created, the Mehr News Agency quoted Davood Qaderi, a member of the Iranian High Council of Employment as saying. The council has approved 1.96 trillion rials (about $160 billion) to job creation plans in the current year, he added. Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami has said that the unemployment rate is planned to be cut to seven percent 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. First Vice President Mohammadreza Rahimi has said that the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created jobs as much as twice of the figure it had promised during the past two years. Rahimi added that if non-Iranian workers leave the country, the jobless rate will not exceed one or two percent.