Iran’s 1st Cooperative Economy Congress held in Tehran

Iran’s first Cooperative Economy Congress was held in Tehran on Sunday with the presence of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iranian Labor and Social Welfare Minister Solat Mortazavi, and Head of Iran Chamber of Cooperatives Bahman Abdollahi, IRNA reported.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the congress, President Raisi called on the country’s cooperatives to try to improve productivity, increase competitiveness, pay attention to the efficiency of managers as key players in cooperative companies, and also try to develop knowledge-based and export-oriented cooperative companies, considering the expansion of the country’s foreign relations.
Also delivering his speech Labor and Social Welfare Minister Solat Mortazavi noted that the view of the 13th government is to strengthen and develop cooperatives in the country’s economy and use people’s capacities.
Referring to the contribution of cooperatives to the country’s economy, the minister said: “More than 101,000 cooperatives are currently active in the country.”
According to Mortazavi, since the beginning of the current government incumbency (August 2021), more than 373 projects in the cooperatives sector have gone operational across the country and over 440 trillion rials (about $884 million) has been invested in this sector.
Elsewhere in the congress, Abdollahi stressed the need to remove the obstacles in the way of the country’s cooperatives, saying: “If we believe in the cooperative economy, we must remove the obstacles in the way of this sector; the role of the parliament is important in this regard and I hope this part will be taken into consideration in the amendment of the cooperative laws and in the seventh National Development Plan.”