TEHRAN – Some 383 cooperative projects worth over 30 trillion rials (about $724.28 million) were inaugurated in several provinces of Iran on Wednesday on the occasion of the Cooperatives Week (September 3-9), IRNA reported.

First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri, and Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari inaugurated the projects through video conference.

As reported, 281 of the mentioned projects were out in operation in cities and 102 were inaugurated in rural areas.

Isfahan, Khuzestan, Fars, and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces had the biggest share of the mentioned projects with 69, 58, 26, and 24 projects, respectively.

With the inauguration of the said projects, 26,691 job opportunities will be created, while 33,715 people are also members of the cooperatives which implemented the projects.

Some 13,649 of the mentioned jobs are created in housing cooperatives, 6,762 in production cooperatives, 6,233 in service cooperatives, 3,073 jobs in industry and mining cooperatives and 2,814 Job opportunities are created in the agricultural sector.

The most job opportunities that are created with the opening of these projects are in Khuzestan province with 3,892 jobs, Tehran with 2,532 jobs and Fars with 1,992 job opportunities.

There are currently 94,000 cooperatives in the country with 10 million members, of which 1.7 million are employed.

EF/MA