Bureau, Office of the Auditor General of South Africa sign agreement

KUWAIT: State Audit Bureau Chairman Adel Al-Saraawi (right), Thembekile Makwetu, Auditor General - South Africa (center), and Magnus Lindell, Vice Chair - Sweden, attend the meeting yesterday. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: The State Audit Bureau (SAB) hosted the annual meeting of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions' (INTOSAI) Capacity Building Committee (CBC), and a meeting for INTOSAI's Donor Steering Committee (IDSC) yesterday at Regency Hotel.

During his speech, SAB Chairman Adel Al-Saraawi said: "The agenda of our meeting covers a wide range of important clauses in terms of capacity-building of the supreme audit institutions and donor cooperation, and we must work together to achieve the purpose of this meeting by providing training, technical assistance, and other development activities."

"Our supreme audit institutions have a great responsibility to eliminate all forms of corruption, enhance governance and transparency, and increase communication and cooperation with all concerned parties with the follow-up of public funds and how to use them by means and methods that achieve the required sustainable development plans and objectives," he added.

"Last year, Saraawi offered to host the 2018 meeting in Kuwait," Thembekile Makwetu, Auditor General - South Africa, said. "It is encouraging that the meeting is held in an area where many senior oversight bodies focus on strengthening their capabilities and values to their country and citizens."

"The Capacity Building Committee in the second year of the INTOSAI Strategic Plan for a six-year period ending in 2022," Makwetu added. "The purpose of this annual meeting is to build capacity in INTOSAI and to assess the progress made by the Capacity Building Committee in addressing its commitments and to address the greater challenges set out in the INTOSAI Strategic Plan." He noted that next tomorrow, they will present the working groups of the committee with detailed progress reports on its activities over the past 12 years.

Joint cooperation

Meanwhile, SAB signed a cooperation agreement with the Office of the Auditor General of the Republic of South Africa aimed at developing joint cooperation between the two countries. The agreement seeks to enhance and develop the professional skills of employees through training initiatives, expert visits, exchange of technical information between the two sides and the identification of research results.

The agreement comes in the framework of seeking to open up to the experiences of the SAIs and in line with the objectives of its strategic plan (2016-2020) which emphasizes the development of institutional capacities. A large number of prominent international bodies, associations and authorities attended the meetings.

By Faten Omar