Credit Co-operatives in Locally Financed Economic Development: Using Energy Efficiency as a Lever

Outside dynamic and often prosperous-looking capital cities, most of the transition economies have not yet achieved broad-based and sustainable growth. A misguided chain of assumptions — that the small enterprise sector would by itself create successful economic growth; that individual private ownership was the only viable form; and that local banking services are best provided by large, usually foreign-owned, national units — have together wasted much time (see McIntyre 2003). The major questions of large enterprise—small enterprise ecology and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) financing, which are central to systems-level success, have been left largely unaddresed.