Report: Some 400,000 jobs created in Iran last calendar year

TEHRAN,June 10(MNA) - Some 400,000 persons have been employed in Iran in last calendar year, which ended on March 19, while the government has announced over 1.6 million job opportunities have been created last year. The Statistics Center of Iran has said that 1.4 million jobs have been certainly created last year. Meanwhile, the Welfare and Social Security Ministry has put the figure at around 1.6 million. The Iranian first vice president 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. On May 16, the IRNA News Agency quoted Mohammadreza Rahimi as saying that in the year to March 2011, the government had been obliged to create 1.1 million jobs, but it created 1.5 million jobs. He added that if non-Iranian workers leave the country, the jobless rate will not exceed one or two percent. Iran's High Council of Employment has approved allocating 45 trillion rials (some $37 billion) to job creation plans in the current calendar year, the deputy cooperatives, labor, and social welfare minister said. The Mehr News Agency quoted Mohammad-Hossein Forouzanmehr as saying that some 1.6 million jobs were created last year. The unemployment rate in Iran stood at 12.3 percent in the past calendar year, showing 1.2 percent fall compared to its preceding year, the Statistical Center of Iran reported.