OIC Economic Outlook 2019
Date: 02 December 2019

SESRIC has launched the 2019 edition of the OIC Economic Outlook report during the 35th Ministerial Session of the COMCEC, which was held in Istanbul on 25-28 November 2019. The main highlights of the report were presented by H.E. Mr. Nebil DABUR, the Director General of SESRIC.

The Report explores global macroeconomic trends with the focus on the OIC countries as a group, and provides a wide-range of useful statistics and analyses, including the comparison of OIC countries’ economic performance with the developed countries, the non-OIC developing countries and the world average.

The main findings of the Report show that in line with the global economic developments, the OIC economies are growing slower and some risks are arising. In 2018, the average growth rate of OIC economies has slowed down to 3.1%, compared to 3.7% in 2017, and it is expected to further decline to 2.4% in 2019. The PPP based aggregated GDP of OIC countries has increased from 19.5 trillion dollars in 2017 to 20.6 trillion dollars in 2018, accounting for 15.2% of global GDP.

While the imposition of new tariffs and uncertainty about further restrictive trade actions are contributing to a slowdown in global trade growth, the OIC countries’ performance in export of goods has improved, from 1.75 trillion dollars in 2017 to 1.98 trillion dollars in 2018, with 10% share in global exports of goods. However, the share of intra-OIC trade in total trade of OIC countries has slightly decreased from 19.1% in 2017 to 18.8% in 2018.

In 2018, only around 8% of the global FDI inflows or near 107 billion dollars ended up in the OIC countries. In total, the 32 OIC countries improved their fiscal balances in 2018, compared to the previous year. The OIC unemployment rate remained almost stable at 6% in 2018. However, in some member countries an increasing number of people are projected to enter the labour market, thus paving the way for unemployment to remain persistently high, particularly among youth.

The special part of this Report focuses on the opportunities and challenges related to mobilizing domestic and external financial resources for development. Here the report is sending a clear message that the need for financing sustainable development of OIC countries is growing, but the actual volume of domestic resources is not increasing enough and is not yet compensated by a symmetric growth of external resources.

The joint Resolution of the 35th Session of COMCEC acknowledged valuable contribution of the OIC Economic Outlook 2019, and invited the OIC countries to take into consideration its recommendations that can ensure more effective mobilization of domestic and external financial resources, including Islamic finance, which offers a significant potential in mitigating the annual investment gap in major socio-economic sectors.

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