The National Audit Office Tanzania (NAOT) and the Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO) in 26th February 2013 inked the third phase of National Audit Office Development Project (NAODP) to enhance the level of accountability, transparency and financial discipline in the use of public resources. The government of Tanzania (GoT), Swedish International Development Agency (SIdA) and Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO) are funding the NAODP.
The signed project will cost five billion (5bn/) of which Swedish National Audit Office will contribute 40 per cent, the government of Tanzania 5 per cent and Swedish International Development Agency 55 per cent of the total. The partners of the project decided to launch the third phase, which is termed as Sustainability Phase to encourage results of the first two phases.
Speaking during the signing ceremony held at Belmonte Hotel, in Dar es Salaam recently, the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) Mr. Ludovick S. L. Utouh said the overall objectives of the project is to further enhance public accountability and financial discipline throughout public institutions. He added that the project also aims to ensure accountability and transparency in public revenues and expenditures so as to achieve social and economic development and is a part of sustainability strategy.
Mr. Utouh elaborated that the third phase of the project is justified by the long term sustainability and useful investments made during the first and second phase projects. In addition, the project will also assist the NAOT to implement its 10 years development vision as well as assisting the office in the new assignment of auditing the institutions of the United Nations and continue with capacity building efforts of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee, he ended.
The total cost for the first phase (July 2004 to February 2008) of NAODP was 11.3bn/= while the second phase (March 2008 to December 2012) had a budget of 7.6bn/= .
In Phase one, among achievements obtained were Establishment of Performance and Specialized Division, Methodology and documentation of audit procedures introduced, Capacity building through training and Provision of IT equipments. The first phase of the project was aimed at assisting Parliament and citizens in controlling and understanding of how public funds are collected and spent by introducing a modern risk based approach to the audit (Financial Audit) while the second phase of the project focus was on enhancing NAOT’s capacity to foster accountability and providing timely and high quality audit reports. During this phase the following achievements obtained. This include Establishment of Public Audit Act of 2008 which enhancing the independence of NAOT and broaden the scope of audit, Development of Regularity Audit manual in accordance with international standards and Eleven (11) high quality performance report where by one report winning the AFROSAI-E SNAO prize for the best performance audit report in 2010.
Speaking at the same event, the Auditor General of Sweden Jan Landahl said that the NAOT joining UN Board of Audit (UNBoA) is a challenge task and will need more capacity building programs to enhance performance. “You are a growing organization, and the UN task only adds to the need for recruitments of new staff, in my view this is something that we should bear in mind as we will implement the project activities for three years, capacity building program is inevitable.” said Sweden Auditor General.
He concluded that the project is now aiming at sustaining the development level that has been through NAODP phase 1 and 2 as sustainability has been an important objective throughout the eight years of the project.
Arising from the encouraging results, the first two phases of sustainability challenges posed by NAOT, the partners decided to launch a third phase which is termed, ‘sustainability phase’ that started in January 2013 and will end in December 2015.
National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT) is a Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) of the United Republic of Tanzania. Its mandate enshrined from article 143 of the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania.