The government and the private sector are bound to work together to get rid of all the barriers and challenges so businesses can thrive, even those online, according to Senator Cynthia Villar.
Speaking during the 9th Summit of the Philippines Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA), Cebu Chapter, the billionaire senator cited a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report that in many least developed countries, consumers and businesses haven’t capitalized on pandemic-induced e-commerce opportunities due to persistent barriers.
“These include costly Internet or broadband services, overreliance on cash, lack of consumers’ trust, poor digital skills among the population and governments’ limited attention to e-commerce,” said Villar during the summit at Radisson Blu Hotel in Cebu City.
“These are the barriers that need to be broken,” noted the senator who lauded the chapter’s new set of officers who took their oath of office before her.
Villar also described timely and relevant the summit’s theme, “Break Barriers Through Innovation,” since the country was recovering from the pandemic and exerting efforts to rebuild the economy.
She cited PICPA’s current direction of thriving amidst the challenges faced by the accounting profession. These include the intensified use of smart technologies, the increasing regulations, and the continual globalization tending to disrupt the typical way of doing the work.
PICPA, she said, acknowledges that the way to adapt to these hurdles is by learning to innovate to rebuild capacities and work efficiency.
“I believe that you are on the right track. You see, as the country recovers from the pandemic, innovation has never been more urgent. The opportunities for it and the benefits to be derived from it, have never been greater,” said Villar.
