COMCEC Poverty Outlook 2018
6
1.2. Poverty Status in the OIC Member Countries
In this sub-section, the poverty status in the OIC Member Countries will be briefly analyzed in
monetary and non-monetary terms. Firstly, this analysis will be made for the OIC Countries in
general. Afterwards, in order to make a clear analysis for the OIC Countries, the poverty status in
these countries will be elaborated in respect to the income categories, namely high, upper-middle,
lower-middle and low income categories.
1.2.1. Monetary Poverty
COMCEC in General
The COMCEC have 57 member countries which are dispersed over four continents. Although the
total population of the member countries accounts for nearly the one-fourth of the world’s total
population, the total GDP of these countries accounts for less than nine percent of the total world
GDP. The OICMember Countries do not forma homogeneous group. In this context, GDP per capita
levels of the OIC Countries display a highly dispersed composition; hence they vary from $978 to
$127,523.12
19 of the OIC Countries are in the Low-Income Country Group,13 and the total population of the
low income OIC Countries is 17,3% of the OIC Region. On the other hand, the total GDP of these
countries is only 3.2% of the total GDP of the OIC Region.14
The number of people who live under US$1.90 a day in the OIC Region is approximately 241
million, with the available data for the period 2009-2017.15 The shares of the poor population in
the 9 low income OIC Countries account more than 40% of their total populations (See Figure 10).
High Income OIC Member Countries
High income refers to an income level (GNI per capita; current US$) of higher than US$12,236. In
this regard, the high income OIC Member Countries are Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
In this group of countries GDP per capita (PPP; Current International $) is high and ranges
between $41,675 (Oman) and $128,378 (Qatar) . Parallel to high income in these
countries, there is no people living below US$1.90 poverty threshold.
12 See Annex 4.
13 The World Bank, 2018c.
14 UNCTAD.
15 Own calculations from World Bank (2018b-d). Data for Afghanistan, Guyana, Somalia, Suriname and Syria are
lacking.