I love going to local markets.

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I tried one this weekend.

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All vendors shouting:

“Try this.”

“Taste that.”

“Best cheese in town.”

“Organic honey.”

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Everyone fighting for your attention.

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It’s nice.

It feels human.

You try things.

You buy things.

You feel good helping local producers.

​

I love that.

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But price is sometimes an issue.

​

It’s not cheap.

And it can’t be cheap.

​

These guys work at very small scale.

Their margins need to be enormous just to make a living.

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I don’t blame them.

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And honestly, paying a high margin on 50 or 100 dollars doesn’t hurt your pocket too much.

You feel generous.

You feel supportive.

You feel like a good citizen.

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But now imagine this logic applied to a $50 million or $100 million infrastructure project.

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That’s exactly what many governments do.

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They are obsessed with using the local and weak supply chain.

In construction contracts, they:

Incentivize it

Or simply impose it

​

“Use local companies.”

“Protect small suppliers.”

“Support the domestic market.”

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It sounds noble.

It sounds fair.

It sounds political gold.

​

But…

It’s like throwing a few pieces of bread to small fish.

​

It does not help them grow.

It just keeps them alive.

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You end up doing two things at the same time:

You overspend on infrastructure

You keep your supply chain in permanent survival mode

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No scale.

No technology.

No learning curve.

No real competitiveness.

​

Just dependency.

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It may be politically palatable.

Weak leaders like to be liked.

They fear backlash.

They avoid bold decisions.

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But let’s be brutally honest:

You’re not strengthening your supply chain.

You’re freezing it in weakness.

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To grow strong, you don’t need bread.

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You need meat.

You need investment.

You need exposure to world-class players.

You need real competition.

You need knowledge transfer.

You need scale.

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Protection creates fragility.

Challenge creates strength.

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I’m involved right now in a case like this.

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The solution is simple.

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But it’s not politically correct.

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It requires saying:

“We want the best.”

“We want efficiency.”

“We want partners who can build and operate world-class infrastructure.”

“And we want our local companies to grow by learning, not by being sheltered.”

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Not as charity.

Not as social policy.

But as an engine of transformation.

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More on this, and why most governments get it wrong, below.

​Vicente Valencia Academy ​

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