Court of Accounts undergoing reform

The Moldovan Court of Accounts (CA) is undergoing a transition from an agency whose main activity was to inspect to one that performs external audit, said Veaceslav Ionita, the chairman of the Parliamentary Commission for economics, budget and finances, at a conference that marked the CA's 15th anniversary of foundation on 4 December 1994, Info-Prim Neo reports. “We hope that this transition will allow (the CA) not only to detect abuses in the use of public finances and report them to the prosecutors, but also to assess whether the funds are spent effectively. Then the reports of the CA will be more useful for Parliament, too, because we could use that information in adopting the budgets of certain public institutions. Another mission of the CA, given that it won't be able to perform external audit for all the government-funded institutions, will be to contribute to the internal control at the respective institutions”, added Ionita. CA president Ala Popescu stated that the adoption of the new law on the Court of Accounts (on 5 December 2008) demonstrated Moldova's commitment to adopt international standards in public external audit. “But there is still much to be done in that direction and in the direction of upgrading the professionalism of the CA's staff, of implementing modern information technologies, so that the audit performed by the CA can become an instrument for betterment, a promoter of financial responsibility”, she said. Richard Maggs, strategy consultant from the World Bank, said that any change requires time, adding that he expects the capacity of the Moldovan Court of Accounts in producing external audit reports to rise 20-25% by 2014 . At the conference, a review was made of the progress in implementing the CA's Strategical Development Plan, one of the ongoing projects supported by the Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO). Another project providing for technical assistance worth about 1 million euro is to be signed with SNAO on December 18.