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COMCEC Transport and Communications

Outlook 2018

59

such as Turkish Airlines and Emirates can achieve higher economies of scale and thus enjoy

higher per capita air passenger traffic.

For the environmental effects of transportation, statistics reveal that OIC countries with high

per capita income tend to emit more transport-related CO

2

. The OIC countries with higher per

capita income are more likely to consume more road sector energy per capita. The top OIC

countries (i.e. Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia Oman, and Bahrain) with highest per capita

income are also the top road sector energy consumers per capita. Such situation is not peculiar

given that richer countries have more private cars and thus more personal trips. In addition,

lower pump prices for gasoline might stimulate more per capita road sector energy

consumption in the OIC geography.

As for privatization of transportation and PPPs/PPIs, brownfield projects has been the most

widely used PPI-type in the world. With regard to both project counts and total project costs,

road PPI projects outnumbered other transport modes. Middle East and North Africa and Sub-

Saharan Africa were the two regions that implemented the fewest number of transport PPI

projects.

As the analysis presented in the Outlook suggest, a great diversification exists among the OIC

countries. On the one hand, oil producing countries such as Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE are among

the top per capita GDP countries. On the other hand, 21 OIC Member States are classified as the

least developed countries by the UN. In such a big diversity, adopting a single policy set

applicable to all OIC members is almost an impossible task. Therefore, when drafting strategies,

policy-makers should also take into account individual needs of members and abstain from

adopting “one size fits all” type of policies and strategies.

The diversity of the OIC countries and availability of various experiences within the OIC region

also indicate a considerable potential for cooperation in the transport industry. The success of

the process heavily depends on the adoption of a sound policy framework, right cooperative

approach, institutional capacity and human resources development, and accumulation of

expertise. In that context, there is a great scope of cooperation among the OIC countries for

sharing their experiences, best practices, and technical assistance especially for policy

formulation and capacity development and for attracting more investments from other OIC

countries in their transport sector.

Regarding telecommunications, OIC member countries usually have lower telephone and

internet penetration rates compared to the rest of the world. However, there are big differences

among OIC countries. While there are some OIC countries with penetration rates close to or even

above high income countries, others have only a negligible level of telephone and internet

penetration.

Iran is the leading OIC country in terms of fixed-telephone penetration with 38.30 percent and

followed by UAE and Kazakhstan. Regarding mobile cellular penetration rates, Maldives and