COMCEC Transport and Communications
Outlook 2019
58
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 37.27 percent and
followed by UAE and Bahrain. Several OIC countries have much higher mobile cellular