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Last week, Filipino boxing legend Sen. Manny Pacquiao proved to the whole world once again that self-discipline, hard work, and perseverance could lead to success.

While queueing at immigration upon my arrival at Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) recently, I found it sad that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) — our “modern day heroes” — coming home for Christmas are not getting the heroes’ welcome they deserve.

I was intently listening to Dr. Diosdado “Dado” Banatao, the chairman of Philippine Development Foundation, when I was taken aback by his statement about the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

While the current administration is trying to rebuild the nation through its war on drugs,truce with rebel groups, eradication of corruption in government, and improvement of government services, among others, businesspeople like mecan also contribute in this rebuilding process through our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. This is the perfect time for businesses torethink their CSR efforts and ride the wave of change that is in ourmidst.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has pegged at P2.4 billion the loss of potential income that the traffic jam in Metro Manila has caused every day in 2014 and P3 billion in 2015. The amount of the loss and the percentage of increase in a span of one year are staggering

The lack of attention to the proper and timely accounting of business transactions has significant consequences. Management is not properly guided when making business decisions, resulting in foregone opportunities or bad decisions that could lead to losses. Reliance on cash flow reports or the movements of funds in the company’s bank accounts, which are used as an alternative basis for assessing the business’ position, poses dangers to decision-making. In this scenario, business owners usually fail to consider other critical aspects affecting the business such as contingent liabilities, unrecorded obligations. Likewise, fraudulent transactions within the organization may go undetected when accounting records are not in order.