TEHRAN, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Iran's President Hassan Rouhani's government has initiated a plan to promote developments and job creations in rural areas, Financial Tribune daily reported on Monday.
The plan has served as a means to impede migrations to cities and to increase economic growth in the rural areas.
Accordingly, the government has been offering low-interest loans to residents of rural and deprived regions to encourage them to initiate new development projects.
Some 3.13 billion U.S. dollars have been allocated in the current Iranian year (starting from March 2017) for the creation of new jobs in rural areas through low-interest loans, Nematollah Rezaei, an official with the Presidential Office for Rural Development, was quoted as saying.
A total of 700,000 new jobs were created in the past Iranian year (March 2016-17), of which 160,000 jobs were in rural areas. This year, the Iranian government has set the target to create up to 300,000 jobs in the rural districts.
The jobs developed in the rural districts are related to tourism, handicraft, modern cultivation techniques, and new technologies, for instance, making progress in producing paper from limestone.
According to the latest National Population and Housing Census conducted in the past Iranian year, about 26 percent, out of 80 million, of Iran's population live in rural areas.
The Statistical Center of Iran's latest report indicates that the unemployment rate for rural areas stood at 7.8 percent for the first quarter of the current fiscal year (March 21-June 21) as compared to 14.4 in urban areas.
