Iran's Kurdistan province has over 30 percent of population in rural areas

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— One in three people in the Iranian Kurdish province of Kurdistan live in rural areas working in the agricultural industries, a relatively high ratio compared to the rest of the country, according to the Kurdistan Province of Agricultural Organisation. 

The head of the organisation Karim Zolfaghari said that over 50 percent of the urban population in the cities are directly dependent on products and incomes from the villages and farming industries located in rural areas. 

“Unfortunately it has not helped raise the average household incomes in the province compared to the other regions in the country despite Kurdistan’s rich natural resources,” Zolfaghari told Iranian Mehrnews Wednesday. 

With a population of 2 million, Kurdistan province, also called Sna in Kurdish, has long been in the list of the least developed provinces in the country with personal incomes equivalent to one third of those in larger provinces such as Tehran and Esfahan where the bulk of manufacturing industries are concentrated. 

Both presidential frontrunners, the moderate Hasan Rouhani and the conservative Ibrahim Raisi have laid out plans to reduce poverty by creating jobs in the Kurdish cities where unemployment rates are above 30 percent. 

Unemployment rate in Iran increased to 12.70 percent in the third quarter of 2016 from 12.20 percent in the second quarter of 2016, according to Iran’s Central Bank. 

The high unemployment rates in Iran’s Kurdish regions, exacerbated by last decades crippling Western sanctions, prompted a large scale migration of young labor force into the neighboring Kurdistan Region in search of jobs in the then expanding Kurdish economy.

According to Zolfaghari, around 110 thousand households in the Sanandaj province are directly engaged in agricultural businesses despite growing numbers of collage graduates in the province. 

“The agricultural sector in the province cannot create more jobs unless larger swaths of lands are transformed into farming lands with irrigation possibilities which could have an impact on annual incomes,” he added. 

Iran’s work force is expected to grow by nearly 2.5% annually until 2020, equivalent to about 3m new job seekers, according to the official government data. Young men and women are seen as the most vulnerable in the fragile economy for whom unemployment stands at 25.2% and 19.7% respectively.