The minister for cooperatives, labor, and social welfare said the government has plans to boost the role of cooperatives. Ali Rabeii said cooperatives were supposed to account for 25% of the country’s economy at the end of the Fifth Five-year Economic Development Plan (2011-2015) but the figure is currently only 4%. Increasing the quality of current cooperatives, removing obstacles in major policies, and accumulating people’s small savings and leading them towards cooperatives are among the main policies the new government is pursuing regarding the cooperatives.
