Speaking in a press conference on the occasion of International Day of Cooperatives (July 11), Bahman Abdollahi hailed Iran’s achievement during the general assembly of the ICA  as the country for the first time was elected as the member of the board of directors of the ICA.

He said that the cooperative sector in the world has 1.2b people as this sector accounts for 12% of the occupation in the world. He added that the Brussels-based ICA has 112 members that Iran could become a member of board of directors for the first time in the history of the ICA and expressed hope that ICC can import knowledge of cooperative through this membership and the chamber can help development of the cooperative section in the country and boosting exports of this sector through interactions with the international organizations like FAO, ICAO and ILO.

Touching upon the food and grain crisis and role of the cooperatives in food provision, Abdollahi reiterated that major part of cooperatives in Iran belongs to the agro sector as 52% of cooperatives in the country are active in the agro and animal husbandry, adding that major fishery and livestock products happen in the cooperative sector.

He reiterated that according to the official statistics in the country, cooperative sector accounted for 9% of occupation last year while the share of this sector from the gross domestic product (GDP) is 6 to 7 percent, and the capacity of the cooperative for creating jobs can reach 15% because job creation in the cooperative sector is at least 20 to 25 percent cheaper. Abdollahi then pointed to the share of the cooperatives in managing the justice shares.

On the role of the ICC in helping developing the exports, he said with the license issued by the Trade Promotion Organization, Iran is to launch trade centers in Russia, Iraq, Pakistan and Qatar and Oman and the chamber can help developing exports of Iranian products and involvement of the cooperative companies. He added that with this achievement almost markets of 112 countries were opened to Iranian products.  He added that ICC is working to have active presence in Russian market and it has restored good cooperation with its Russian counterpart.

On the housing cooperatives, he said that since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, some 2.2m units of houses have been constructed and delivered by the cooperatives, admitting that there are still some problems but the services of the cooperatives should not be ignored.

He also criticized the Road and urban development ministry for its passiveness for construction of housing units for the workers and the ministry has not issued required licenses for the cooperatives for start of the project.

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The two-year old Iran-Turkmenistan gas dispute has now officially been transferred to the International Court of Arbitration (ICA) and the court is expected to issue its verdict within two years.

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