Azerbaijan adopts new action plan on employment strategy
By Rasana Gasimova
Azerbaijan has approved an action plan for 2020-2025 to implement the country's Employment Strategy.
President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on approving the plan on February 13.
The document aims at forming a long-term state employment policy aimed at ensuring effective employment on the basis of the country’s demographic aspects, development prospects and economic priorities of the country.
The purpose of the strategy is to ensure the transition of employment policy from extensive to an intensive phase, to increase the employment level of the population, to provide full employment, to support decent work and increasing labor productivity.
The implementation of the strategy is also aimed at supporting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the development of the labor market.
The strategy envisages decreasing unemployment rate to 4 percent, bringing official employment (except of the agricultural sector) to 80 percent, reducing the percentage of young people (aged 15-24) who are not employed in the labor market and in education to 15 percent, as well as increasing the number of regional vocational education centers to 10.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population has been assigned relevant coordination work and will report details of their work once a year.
Earlier, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population Sahil Babayev noted that this year, the ministry plans to increase the number of employed citizens by 30 percent and bring this indicator to 130,000 people, while the number of people involved in vocational training - by over 40 percent and bring it to 5,000.
Along with these steps, it is also planned to expand the coverage of the self-employment program in 2020. In general, this year, up to 12,000 families will be involved in the self-employment program, 64,000 people - in paid public work.
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