Increasing Agricultural Productivity:
Encouraging Foreign Direct Investments in the COMCEC Region
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5. Conclusions and Recommendations
Agricultural development and improving food security either by increasing agricultural
productivity or by bringing more land under cultivation require financial investments from
domestic and foreign investors.
But despite the wide publicity about foreign direct investment in the agricultural sector
following the food crisis in 2008, it is fair to conclude that little real investment has been made
on the ground. This conclusion is in line with the agricultural FDI assessment in the COMCEC
Region.
However, changing the attractiveness of the agricultural sector and, in parallel, improving the
investment climate of the COMCEC Member Countries is a long term process. A coordinated and
harmonized approach is evident and in this respect there is an important role for the COMCEC as
the main multilateral economic and commercial cooperation platform of the Islamic world.
5.1 Main Conclusions of the Study
The main conclusions of this study are listed below:
 The size of the rural population in the COMCEC Member Countries is above the world’s
average, but the size of agricultural workforce is lower and the speed with which the
workforce is declining (2000–2010) is faster than in the rest of the world,
 The supply of agricultural land in the COMCEC Member Countries is significantly higher
than in other world regions. More than 75 percent of agricultural land is currently used
for permanent pasture, and only 20 percent is cultivated for seasonal crops,
 Fresh water supply remains a huge challenge. The dependency ratio (on external water
sources) is 33 percent compared to the world’s average of 22 percent and COMCEC’s
share of the world’s total renewable water resource is 14.5 percent despite the fact that
its agricultural land comprise of 29 percent of the world’s total agricultural land,
 Irrigation techniques, by means of sprinkler systems or localized irrigation techniques
might reduce the water waste, but still more than 91 percent of all land is cultivated
using surface irrigation. A cost effective but wasteful production technique,
 The use of fertilizers in the agricultural production process in the COMCEC Member
Countries is small and the gap with other developing countries and the rest of the world
widens each year. In addition, the use of tractors is more than twice as small in the
COMCEC Member Countries as in the rest of the world,
 Consequently, the agricultural productivity measured in US dollar per agricultural
worker accounted for only 67 percent compared to worldwide average,