The Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries informs that the acronym of the Centre has been changed from SESRTCIC to SESRIC by the decision of its Board of Directors in its Twentyninth Meeting, held on September 10-11, 2007 in Ankara, Turkey and has been approved by the 11th Session Islamic Summit Conference held in Dakar, Senegal on March 13-14, 2008. The Centre would, therefore, appreciate that its new acronym be used whenever necessary in any future correspondence.

The agenda for the 11th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference held in Dakar, Senegal on March 13-14, 2008 focused on the following items:

• Implementation of the OIC Ten-Year Program of Action
• Adoption of the revised OIC Charter
• Two brainstorming sessions on economic cooperation among Member States, especially the African ones and Knowledge-sharing among Member States.

The Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu, was re-elected for a new term of office during the closing meeting of the 11th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference held in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

The 24^th Meeting of the Follow-up Committee of the COMCEC will be held from 13^th to 15^th May 2008 in Antalya, Turkey.

In accordance with the OIC Ten-Year Programme of Action target of facilitating the placement of OIC universities among the top 500 in the world, SESRIC is preparing the "Academic Ranking of Universities in the OIC Countries" by using the methodology designed by the Core Group and approved by the Foreign Ministers of the OIC Member Countries in May, 2007 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

In this connection, the Universities of the OIC Member Countries are requested to provide their inputs through filling in the questionnaire on University Ranking in OIC Member Countries.

The Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), a subsidiary organ of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is inviting project proposals that demonstrate/employ innovative approaches to poverty alleviation in the OIC Member Countries.

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) organised the First Meeting of the Statistical Working Group (SWG-1) at the OIC level on March 25- 26, 2008 at its Headquarters in Jeddah. The SWG has been initiated in accordance with the recommendation of the Expert Group Meeting on Statistical Capacity Building organised by IDB on April 29, 2007 which called on IDB to “establish a working group, in collaboration with the relevant OIC Institutions, to meet regularly in order to harmonise statistical activities, exchange experiences and best practices, develop common methodologies for collecting and processing data from Member Countries”. Similar proposal in the form of a project for establishing SWG was made by the Director General of SESRIC, Dr. Savas Alpay, during his visit to the IDB on December 3, 2007.

The 39th Session of the UN Statistical Commission was held at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, on February 26-29, 2008. The Commission elected South Africa as the Chair of the Statistical Commission and Finland, Colombia, Oman and Hungary as the members of the Bureau. During the working Sessions, the Commission discussed the reports prepared by the designated institutions on employment statistics, education statistics, national accounts, tourism statistics, industrial statistics, trade statistics, health statistics, informal sector statistics and environment statistics.

The 11th Meeting of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA) was held in New York, at the United Nations Headquarters, on February 25, 2008. The Director of the United Nations Statistics Division and Co-chair of the committee, Mr. Paul Cheung, welcomed the participants. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Pieter Everaers, Director of Agriculture and Environment Statistics, Statistical Cooperation of Eurostat and also Co-chair of the Committee.

The Centre organised a training course on “Census and Survey Processing System (CSPRO) & Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)” at the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Sudan on February 4-6, 2008. The course was provided by an expert from the Department of Statistics in Jordan and was attended by 12 staff members of the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Sudan.

The 1st Meeting of the Heads of National Statistical Offices of ECO Member Countries was held on January 28-29, 2008, in Tehran, the Islamic Republic of Iran and was attended by the ECO Deputy Secretary-General, Heads of National Statistical Offices of the ECO member countries, the representatives of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), the Deputies, Director Generals and Senior Experts of the Statistical Centre of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dr. Sıdıka Başcı represented SESRIC thereat.

Launched in 1999, the GDN is a global network of research and policy institute dedicated to building high-quality social science research capacity across the developing and transition world. GDN aims to generate policy relevant, local research and build the capacity of research institutes and individual researchers in the developing and transition world. The 9th Annual Global Development Network (GDN) Conference on the theme 'Security for Development: Confronting Threats to Survival and Safety' was held in Brisbane, Australia, on January 27, 2008.

Analyzing government deficit/surplus of countries gives some idea about government fiscal (taxation and spending) policies of the countries since it is the difference between total revenues and total expenditures (including capital expenditure) of the governments. Taxes, social contributions, dividends, and other property incomes constitute the main components of the revenues of the governments. On the other hand, the main expenditure items are compensation of civil servants, social benefits, interests on the public debt, subsidies and gross fixed capital formation.

Value added of a sector refers to the contribution of that sector to the total output and is defined as output minus intermediate consumption in that sector. In this report, the value added of three major sectors, namely agriculture, industry and services will be investigated at the sub-groups level of the OIC countries, taking into consideration the performance at the individual country level.

The importance of savings and investments for the development and growth of any economy is well documented in the economics literature. Savings are the main source of funds to finance capital investment, while the share of total GDP that is devoted to investment in fixed assets is an important indicator of future economic growth for an economy. However, the levels of savings and investments in developing countries, including some of the OIC member countries, are not satisfactory. Comparing the 1993-1995 and 2004-2006 averages of gross savings and investments in fixed assets as a % of GDP for the OIC member countries shows that much has to be done in this regard.

Distribution of population within OIC member countries is not uniform.

The most crowded countries of the world; Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh with more than 100 millions of people and the scarcely populated ones; Maldives, Brunei, Suriname, Comoros, Bahrain, Guyana, Djibouti and Qatar with less than 1 million are among the member countries.

The developing world including the OIC member countries suffers from relatively poor living conditions (environmental, economic, and social) and low quality health care. This situation is reflected in many vital demographic indicators, showing that the developing countries are undergoing unfavorable conditions relative to the developed countries.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), despite many caveats, is generally accepted as an indicator measuring the total size of the economy in a given year. Taking this into consideration, it is obvious that there are huge size differences among the economies of the OIC member countries. While six, out of the 57 OIC member countries (Maldives, Guyana, Djibouti, Gambia, Comoros, and Guinea Bissau) produced less than one billion in 2006, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia recorded real GDP figures of over $200 billion . In the same year, only 14 countries realised real GDP figures over the OIC group average of $34,866 million.

The Commission on Growth and Development was launched in April 2006 in order to gather and evolve over a period of two years a best understanding of the policies and strategies that underlie rapid and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. It brings together as commissioners twenty-one leading practitioners in government, business and the policymaking fields from both the developing and industrialized world. The Commission's audience is the leaders of developing countries.

Africa is the world's poorest and least developed continent. Failing economies, high unemployment, human rights abuses, armed conflict and inadequate social services contribute to the outward migration of African professionals. Studies show that more than a third of Africa’s highly qualified human resources are presently in the diaspora (people of African origin living outside the continent) and most of them appear to be unlikely to return to their countries. 

A recent US$30 million grant from the World Bank aims to support the ongoing Microfinance Support for Poverty Reduction Project, being funded through the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). It will help expand the outreach of financial services provided by the country’s microfinance service providers, especially women, in most of the provinces of Afghanistan. It will also help render the microfinance institutions, which have already started to diversify their funding sources beyond those provided by government and donors, more financially self-reliant.

According to the report of the World Bank Africa Development Indicators 2007 (ADI) based on more than a thousand indicators covering economic, human and private-sector development, governance, environment, and aid, many of the economies in Africa are seen to be growing fast and at steady rates. Over the past decade, Africa has recorded an average growth rate of 5.4 percent, which is at pace with the rest of the world and is supportive of the region’s ability to meet the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health and other issues, and to help make it a significant investment destination for global capital.

The World Bank report Global Economic Prospects 2008 states that “resilience in developing economies is cushioning the current slowdown in the United States, with real GDP growth for developing countries expected to ease to 7.1 percent in 2008, while high-income countries are predicted to grow by a modest 2.2 percent”. It is noted that world growth slowed down slightly in 2007 to 3.6 percent from 3.9 percent in 2006, largely due to weaker growth in high-income countries. In 2008 global growth will go down further to 3.3 percent.

Mozambique, a country of 20 million, has been a strong economic performer in Africa, ever since the debilitating civil war ended in 1992, with the country realizing an average annual rate of economic growth of 8 percent between 1996 and 2006. This leads to a drop in poverty, where, between 1997 and 2003, close to 3 million people were delivered from abject poverty. This, in turn, brought a decline of 35 percent in infant and under-five mortality, and a 65 percent increase in net primary school enrollment, leading improvements in the Millennium Development Goals in these key areas.