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COMCEC Transport and Communications

Outlook 2019

55

7.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This Outlook aims at providing a brief picture of the transport and telecommunication sector in

the OIC countries.

The analysis reveals that there is a positive correlation between the LPI scores and international

merchandise trade (excluding oil exports) as well as the GCI scores of the OIC countries. This

might imply that if an OIC country has a high LPI score this gives it a competitive advantage over

those with lower LPI scores as it can facilitate its international trade through its enhanced

logistics infrastructure and services. According to the 2016 LPI scores, among the OIC countries,

UAE, Qatar, Malaysia, and Turkey come on top of the rankings, while Tajikistan, Sierra Leone,

Mauritania, and Somalia come at the bottom.

World Bank’s Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI) scores of the OIC countries, which aims

at capturing a country's level of integration into the existing liner shipping network, show that

Malaysia (106.8), UAE (70.6), Morocco (64.7), and Egypt (62.5) are well connected to the global

shipping network whereas Albania (3.9), Brunei (4), Guinea Bissau (4.5), and Guyana (4.9) are

least connected. In terms of average LSCI scores, OIC-MENA region performed better than OIC-

Asia region as well as the world starting from 2008. On the other hand, average LSCI scores for

OIC-Sub-Saharan Africa region remained well below the world averages.

One implication of this is that the best performing countries have large transhipment ports (e.g.

Malaysia, Morocco, and Egypt) and gateway ports (e.g. Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey). On

the other hand, the least performing countries are either not located on the main liner shipping

services or lack the physical and operational capacity to serve large container ships.

With regard to burden of custom procedures, both OIC-Asia and OIC-Sub-Saharan Africa fell

below world averages for the 2007-2015 period, whereas OIC-MENA is an exception with its

recent progress.

With respect to transport infrastructure, OIC overall and OIC-Sub-Saharan Africa averages fell

below the world averages for every transport infrastructure measure according to the Global

Competitiveness Report 2016-2017 (WEF, 2016) while OIC-Asia performed better than world

averages only in the quality of railroad infrastructure. OIC-MENA, on the other hand, is the best

performing OIC region which outperforms all the world averages except the quality of railroad

infrastructure. Five of the seven best performing OIC countries (i.e. UAE, Malaysia, Bahrain,

Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Oman) in terms of quality of transport infrastructure are oil

producing gulf countries. On the other hand, nine out of eleven worst performing OIC countries

(i.e. Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra

Leone, and Yemen) in the same measure are from Sub-Saharan Africa.