Extracted from AFP

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) aims to create 5,000 jobs in Bulgaria to help cut the unemployment toll which afflicts 17% of the impoverished country's workforce.

The UN body will set up job centres in the 24 Bulgarian towns hardest hit by unemployment, aiming to motivate jobless people to retrain or open start-up businesses.

"Unemployment is one of the biggest problems facing the Bulgarian government," UNDP Jobs Project Head Elena Panova told AFP. The centres were a traditional way to encourage employment while the economy was in recession, she added.
The UN program, which created 1,500 permanent jobs in 2001, has a budget of USD 7 M. Last year the project provided EUR 306,775 worth of credit-leasing.

Joblessness has rocketed in Bulgaria because the economy is being restructured and a number of non-profit-making state businesses have been closed.
According to the World Bank, 1.2 million jobs have been destroyed in Bulgaria in the decade since the fall of communism in 1989.

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