Controllers, Auditors Sharpen Skills On Public Finance Verification

Finance Minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey in the company of the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Supreme State Audit, Henri Eyebe Ayissi, chaired the openining of a four-day capacity building workshop in Yaounde on September 3.

Internal controllers and auditors of the Ministry of Finance are currently being drilled on the methodology and techniques of verification that meet national and international standards. This is within the framework of a four-day capacity building workshop that went underway in Yaounde on Tuesday September 3 under the auspices of Finance Minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey accompanied by the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Supreme State Audit, Henri Eyebe Ayissi.

Target is to drill the controllers and auditors on international verification standards and principles, share new control methods and techniques so as to harmonise the way of writing reports that meet international standards. Speaking during the opening ceremony, Alamine Ousmane Mey observed that the success of any structure largely depends on the quality of its human resources. "This is at a delivery point and you need to address the issue of control and verification. We want to make sure that our collaborators in charge of control and audit benefit from the experience of State Auditors who have a wealth of experience in the domain," he said. With the resource persons drawn from the Supreme State Audit, the Finance Minister already envisaged improvement on the control and verification activities of the ministry. He said this would lead to using new techniques that are nationally and internationally accepted to improve on control. "We hope to have an administration that is efficient and acting according to national and international standards," he noted.

The two-module workshop focuses on the steps of a conformity and financial audit and initiation to the process of performance audit. The participants are going through lessons on "Ethics of internal audit," "Fundamental concepts of verification,", "Auditing techniques," "Initiation to performance auditing," as well as on "Control and audit report writing," among others. They are also learning how to plan for verification missions, how to carry it out and ways of evaluating results of a verification mission. The workshop ends Friday September 6, 2013.