Under al-Hamdi's administration, Yemen enjoyed the most prosperous economic boom since 1962, as he was responsible for a civil engineering endeavour that would usher in an era of unprecedented economic growth in Yemen's post-Imamate history. More specifically, Hamdi fostered the creation of 'Local Development Associations,' which functioned as autonomous community-based institutions focused on developing local infrastructure. Scholar Isa Blumi notes that while "Able to exclusively access the potential tax revenue under their jurisdictions, the committees created from members of the community could also solicit external funds and loans (almost exclusively drawn from local, non-banking sources) independently of the central state and bank now formally connected to the outside world." In other words, during the 1970s the LDAs did the heavy lifting as far as the development of Yemen's infrastructure was concerned. What is more, the locally driven LDAs protected the Yemeni countryside from an influx of foreign finance capital (disguised as development 'aid' and often tethered to massive usury rates). The LDA system thus preserved Yemen's economic sovereignty until 1978.