Mohammad Shariatmadari said on Twitter on Monday Iran has expanded its Public Free Insurance scheme to cover some 1.4 million families living in villages and other underdeveloped regions.

More than 240,000 village households have been included in the free insurance coverage since 2017 when the current administrative government was reelected, said the official IRNA news agency.

The insurance scheme is financed by Iran’s Fund for Social Insurance of Farmers, Villagers and Nomads, where assets have reportedly increased nearly nine-fold over the past two years to reach over 1,000 trillion rials ($4 billion).

The insurance covers both social security issues as well health needs of poor people living in underdeveloped rural regions across Iran.

An increased free insurance coverage could also help create a boom in the Iranian insurance sector, especially in its health subsector which has been struggling with lower demand as a result of the economic situation caused by the US sanctions as well as the spread of the coronavirus in the country.

Iran has been pushing to narrow the gap between its rural and urban regions as part of its rural development plans.

Various services have been expanded to cover tens of thousands of villages across Iran while the government keeps building out the infrastructure in the rural regions.

 

Press TV contributed to this story.