ALTHOUGH it makes for frustrating reading of the news an ongoing scandal involving the power supply agreements (PSAs) between electricity distributor Meralco and electricity producer San Miguel Global Power (SMGP), or specifically, its entities that run the Ilijan gas-powered and Sual coal-powered generating plants, I suppose that from a certain perspective the presumption of regularity and competence on San Miguel's part in what amount to rather common business transactions is understandable. One does not become the largest business enterprise in the country by habitually doing sloppy work and making basic mistakes.
It is an equally valid truism, however, that nobody's perfect. As hard as it seems for some commentators and the company itself to wrap their heads around the notion, even successful and well-run organizations are sometimes capable of making dumb and costly errors, entirely on their own, and in spite of opportunities to correct them before they are obliged to bear the consequences. That is exactly what has happened in San Miguel's case, which was correctly called by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) in ruling that it could not pass the cost of its own unavoidable missteps on to already burdened electricity consumers.
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