COMCEC Poverty Outlook 2016:
Human Development in OIC
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which accounts to a decrease of percent10. Despite this improvement, 52 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 $953 to $143,788.12
15 of the OIC Countries are in the Low-Income Country Group,13 and the total population of the
low income OIC Countries is nearly the one-fourth of the OIC Region. On the other hand, the
total GDP of these countries is only four percent of the total GDP of the OIC Region. Within the
last two years three countries were passed to lower-middle income group, namely Kyrgyzstan,
Bangladesh and Tajikistan.
The number of people who live under US$1.90 a day in the OIC Region is nearly 375 million,
with the available data for the period 2003-2012.14 The shares of the poor population in the
low income OIC Countries account for more than the one-third of their total populations,
except Cameroon which has a rate of 27.61 (See Figure 9).
High Income OIC Member Countries
High income refers to an income level (GNI per capita; current US$) of higher than US$12,736.
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 $38,234 (Oman) and $143,788 (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, 2015a.
14 Ibid.