The Philippine Accreditation Bureau (PAB) was invited by the Bureau Veritas Certification (BVC) on 08 November 2019 to the Internal Auditors Training to promote PAB’s accreditation services. The training was attended by participants from sectors like construction, manpower and health.

During her talk, Ms. Sheena De La Torre, one of PAB’s promotions officers, discussed the equivalence of PAB accreditation to those performed by other signatory members of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and both ILAC and IAF’s regional counterpart Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC).

PAB is the national accreditation of the Philippines and is a signatory member to ILAC, IAF and APAC for Mutual Recognition Arrangement on scopes and sub-scopes of testing and calibration, inspection, medication testing, environmental management system, food safety management system and quality management system. PAB bestows an accreditation that is equivalent to other foreign accreditation bodies like United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), Singapore Accreditation Council (SAC) and ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB), and Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ), among others. PAB is also a member of the International Halal Accreditation Forum (IHAF) which aims to facilitate the international Halal trade of goods and services.  

Organizations have the options to get their certification from certification bodies (CBs) which are accredited by PAB or other signatory member. Ms. De la Torre stressed that both issued accreditations are equivalent in terms of international recognition and global acceptance.

PAB, like any other foreign accreditation bodies are regularly peer-evaluated by a team of international evaluators coming from other accreditation bodies organized by the ILAC, IAF and APAC. Similarly, evaluators from PAB are also invited to be part of the team of evaluators which evaluates other accreditation bodies. This process ensures the equivalence and confidence in the accreditations performed and maintained by accreditation bodies that are members of these international organizations.

Accreditation is voluntary and considered as the highest form of self-regulation for CABs.  By seeking accreditation, an organization allows their systems and processes to be scrutinized by a third party assessment team to provide them with independent evaluation that they can use as benchmark of performance and in improving their business processes. It also attests competence, impartiality and compliance to international standards and practices.

Release Date: 13 November 2019.