The Commission on Audit (COA) through the Project Management Office and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) conducted an inception and planning workshop to incorporate the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAIs) and improve quality of financial audit reports. The workshop was held at the COA Professional Development Center from March 2 to 4, 2016..

The workshop was part of the Regional-Capacity Development Technical Assistance (R-CDTA) conducted by the ADB under the Project on Enhancing Roles of Supreme Audit Institutions in Selected ASEAN Countries financed by the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction. The State Audit Office of Vietnam, the Office of the Auditor General of the Union of Myanmar, and the State Audit Organization of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic also participated in this project.

COA Chairperson Michael G. Aguinaldo emphasized that “[T]he Commission on Audit is devoted to continuous training which is second nature to us. This workshop will help us take a deeper look at international standards and see how we can apply them in our own practice.”

 “Our development partners also asked us to do some audit work for their projects in the country. It is important that COA is on the same page with implementing agencies and that auditors and management understand where the ADB and our other development partners are coming from. Hopefully, we will be able to meet the requirements of our development partners,” he added.

The workshop aimed to guide implementing agencies in further improving the quality of project financial statements and deepening the understanding of the interlink between financial reporting and auditing.

The R-CDTA will yield three main outputs: (1) the assessment of COA existing guidelines; (2) a piloted and updated COA guidelines on ISSAIs financial audit; and (3) the dissemination of the COA guidelines on ISSAI financial audits to other ASEAN members.

The ADB acknowledged COA’s role as Project Leader for ISSAI Implementation under the Knowledge Sharing Committee, and the Chairperson of the Training Committee, both of the ASEANSAI.

Participants were given an overview on targets and progress of the R-CDTA, ADB investments in the Philippines and External Audit of ADB projects, among others. Participants were also asked for their input on COA’s roles in financial audit as well as discussed COA’s readiness to fully implement ISSAI. At the third day of the workshop, the group held focus group discussions to tackle issues including COA’s Action Plan in improving financial audit guidelines to be aligned with ISSAI. #