“PAMA NextGen: Intelligent Management Professionals for an Automated Economy”
54th Turnover and Induction Ceremonies, August 20, 2026, The Bellevue Manila, Alabang
The Quick Read
- Philippine Association of Management Accountants (PAMA) holds its 54th Induction and Turnover Ceremonies on August 20, 2026, at The Bellevue Manila in Alabang, installing a new board alongside its foundation arm, PAMA Foundation, Inc. (PFI)
- The organization has spent over five decades distinguishing management accounting, the discipline of guiding what a business does next, from auditing, which reports on what it already did
- Incoming president Lorna Caballero-Lacsa, CPA, MBA takes over from Atty. Imelda A. Busto, CPA, under the theme “PAMA NextGen: Intelligent Management Professionals for an Automated Economy”
- The new term opens with a named set of priorities, including a junior chapter program aimed at university students and a push to reactivate PAMA’s chartered chapters nationwide
- Former Chief Justice Hon. Maria Lourdes A. Sereno headlines the evening as inspirational speaker, alongside Atty. Emmanuel Y. Artiza, CPA, as inducting officer
A Profession Distinct From Auditing
Most people who hear “accountant” picture someone reconciling last year’s books. The management accounting profession is a different discipline entirely. Where an auditor reports on what a business has already done, a management accountant sits inside the organization and helps decide what it does next, through costing, planning, analysis, and strategy. It is the difference between looking backward and looking ahead, and it is a distinction the Philippine Association of Management Accountants (PAMA) has spent more than fifty years trying to make clear.
PAMA was established in 1972, originally as the Philippine chapter of the National Association of Accountants, with the specific goal of promoting management accounting as its own profession rather than a subset of auditing. Today it functions as the country’s professional home for the discipline and its affiliate to the Institute of Management Accountants internationally. On August 20, 2026, that history reaches its 54th induction cycle, when PAMA installs a new board of directors for FY 2026-2027.
Fifty-Four Years, One Ceremony
The Joint Turnover and Induction Ceremonies for PAMA and its foundation arm, PAMA Foundation, Inc. (PFI), take place at The Bellevue Manila in Alabang, Muntinlupa City, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Running the induction alongside PFI is deliberate. The foundation carries out PAMA’s community and advocacy work, and pairing the two turnovers under one program signals that the association treats its outreach mandate with the same weight as its professional one.
Atty. Imelda A. Busto, CPA, hands the PAMA presidency to Lorna Caballero-Lacsa, CPA, MBA, while Dr. Lolita P. Tang, CPA, turns over the PFI chairmanship to Marcos T. Lim, CPA. Both incoming leaders take office under a shared theme for the evening and the year ahead: “PAMA NextGen: Intelligent Management Professionals for an Automated Economy.” Framing the ceremony around the profession’s future puts a clear stake in the ground for where PAMA’s leadership expects the field to go next.
New Faces at the Helm
Hon. Maria Lourdes A. Sereno, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, serves as the evening’s inspirational speaker, and Atty. Emmanuel Y. Artiza, CPA, head of the Office of the General Accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission, serves as inducting officer. Their presence at a professional accounting body’s turnover reflects the standing PAMA has built within Philippine regulatory and legal circles over five decades.
The leadership change also traces a clear line of succession. Caballero-Lacsa follows Busto, who followed Ranulfo I. Sanchez in FY 2024-2025, who in turn followed Richard R. Ibarra in FY 2023-2024. It is the kind of steady, term-by-term handover that keeps a fifty-year-old professional organization functioning rather than reinventing itself every cycle.
Where the New Term Is Headed
The incoming board is organizing its term around four strategic priorities, the opening year of a longer arc running through FY 2031. The most immediate is JPAMA, a junior chapter program modeled on similar student initiatives in the accounting field, meant to build a pipeline for the management accounting profession starting at the university level rather than waiting for graduates to enter the workforce first.
Alongside it sits a phased plan to reactivate PAMA’s chartered chapters nationwide, only one of which, in Central Luzon, is currently active out of ten. PAMA’s oldest chapter, in Iloilo, was chartered in January 1986 and turns 40 this year, a reminder of how far the network once reached and how much of it the new board intends to bring back online. Rounding out the priorities is a push to strengthen continuing professional development and modernize member services digitally, a direct response to the automation theme framing the entire term.
Registration for the ceremony closes August 15, 2026. More information is available at pama.com.ph and facebook.com/pamaph.
A fifty-four-year-old professional organization does not usually need to explain itself twice. But as automation reshapes what accountants are asked to do, PAMA’s new leadership is betting that the clearest way forward is to keep restating what made the profession necessary in the first place, and to build the next generation of practitioners who understand the difference between counting what happened and deciding what happens next.
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