USAID and visions of progress

Because this was the first week of Practicum, we only had technical training on Friday this week. Fortunately, technical training was so interesting on Friday that it was worth two days. Also, we have another full week of practicum next week.
To kick of the day, a representative of USAID came to speak to us. He was actually a contractor who was working for a company hired by USAID to develop business centers and help to streamline the business registration process in Albania. Currently, USAID is working with 10 cities in Albania. To monitor its progress, it uses 10 other cities as control cities. As of now in most municipalities a business owner must register with about 15 different offices to get his business registered. There is little logic as to who an owner must register with, where those office are and even less information about what the process is. Given this opaque and incoherent process it is not surprising that many people don’t bother to register their business or pay taxes. It is very unclear what the penalty is for not paying taxes. As far as I can tell, there really is none but I could be wrong. The benefit to paying taxes seems to be that you could get your garbage collected and be a vendor for the government. However, small businesses wouldn’t be vendors anyway so there is really no incentive for them. To help streamline the business process USAID is establishing information centers for people to go to in order to ask how to register their business. USAID is also helping municipalities distill the registration process to 2-3 windows or steps.

In addition to the business center project, the USAID representative spoke of the many different steps Albania needs to take to get accepted to the EU. Many relate to sustainability and urban planning, which the country currently lacks. However, the federal government just started requiring each region to develop a regional plan so it looks like I’ve arrived at the right time. I asked him a few questions regarding sustainability, insulations and energy efficiency. He seemed to think people didn’t use insulation because they didn’t have to pay their electricity and/or didn’t see a clear correlation between paying increased electric bills and lacking insulation. (This inability to see this correlation is not confined to Albania, embarrassingly most American’s fail to see the importance of renovating or fixing their homes to be energy efficient).

The Albanian logic behind not investing in energy efficiency sort of makes sense since electric use isn’t really that high here. Every family that I’ve seen sits in one room from the time they get home to the time each member goes to sleep. In the winter they gather around the heater, in the spring and summer it’s the tv. So, unlike America where there is a light on in every room, here there isn’t one on in every room here (nor is there any privacy). However, I keep wondering if it’s a chicken and egg problem. Everyone sits in the same room because it’s the only room with an oven or heater of some sort. In the bitter cold winter, why would you separate yourself if you would literally freeze to death? So, even though now that there are other options besides having one room heated, such as having a heater in each room or insulation, those alternatives seem like an unnecessary investment because everyone sits in the same room anyway.

After the lecture I spoke to him about energy efficiency initiative and regional plans. He told me to get in touch with him through email, as he knew the head of the energy efficiency council in Tirana. I’m so excited to get involved and the summer is a great time to start making connections as my job will be pretty slow (Albanians, like most Europeans, take August off). My COD director, Diana, overhead the conversation and told me she’d help me get involved. She promised to connect me to the regional planning offices and proper point people. Amazing!