COMCEC Poverty Outlook 2017
6
accounts to a decrease of 29 percent 10. Despite this improvement, 50 countries are in serious
situation and alarming situation.11
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 OIC Member Countries do not form a 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
16 of the OIC Countries are in the Low-Income Country Group,13 and the total population of the
low income OIC Countries is 14% of the OIC Region. On the other hand, the total GDP of these
countries is only 2.3% of the total GDP of the OIC Region. Within the last three years three
countries were passed to lower-middle income group, namely Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and
Tajikistan.
The number of people who live under US$1.90 a day in the OIC Region is 277.3 million, with the
available data for the period 2003-2014.14 The shares of the poor population in the low income
OIC Countries account almost half of their total populations (See Figure 10).
High Income OIC Member Countries
High income refers to an income level (GNI per capita; current US$) 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 $42,737 (Oman) and $127,523 (Qatar) . Parallel to high income in these
countries, there is no people living below US$1.90 poverty threshold.
10 IFPRI , 2015.
11 See Annex 7.
12 See Annex 4.
13 The World Bank, 2016a.
14 Ibid.