A total of 233 new cooperatives were registered in Iran during the second month of the current fiscal year (April 21-May 21), which shows a 40% decline compared with the corresponding period of last year.
The latest data were released by the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare's Statistics and Strategic Data Center.
These cooperatives have 5,870 members and are estimated to create 4,666 jobs to register a 25% and 43% decline respectively year-on-year.
The highest number of cooperatives was registered in the provinces of Fars, Khorasan Razavi and Mazandaran with 24, 17 and 15 companies respectively.
The largest number of cooperatives was registered in the fields of "agriculture" with 63 and "industries" with 62.
The fields of “other general and social services” and “hygiene and social work” had the highest number of members with 1,310 and 1,284 respectively.
“Other general and social services” and “industries” are sectors estimated to create the highest number of jobs with 1,425 and 804 respectively.
A cooperative is a jointly-owned enterprise engaging in the production or distribution of goods or the supply of services operated by its members for their mutual benefit, typically organized by consumers or farmers.
Such businesses are typically more economically resilient than many other forms of enterprise, with twice the number of cooperatives surviving their first five years compared with other business ownership models.
Cooperatives mainly pursue social goals that they aim to accomplish by investing a proportion of trading profits back into their communities.
The parliament has tasked the government with increasing the share of cooperatives in gross domestic product to 25% by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan (2021).
According to Bahman Abdollahi, the head of Iran Chamber of Cooperatives, the sector’s current share in Iran’s GDP is around 7%.
Development plans are devised by the government and ratified by the parliament every five years since 1991. These are meant to provide the broad directions for a wide range of economic reforms and social priorities.
