29 November 2021

Auckland, New Zealand: The Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions (PASAI) held its 28th Governing Board meeting online on 26 November 2021. Ajay Nand, Auditor-General of Fiji and Chair of the PASAI Governing Board, chaired the meeting.

Esther Lameko-Poutoa, Chief Executive PASAI, outlined work aligned to PASAI’s five Strategic Priorities that had occurred since the last meeting. Her report included:

• recent SAI independence workshops for SAIs FSM National, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Solomon Islands to inform, encourage and promote possible avenues to address gaps in independence,

• continued work to improve the quality and timeliness of Financial Statements of Government audits with the challenges of both addressing audit backlogs and completing current audits with COVID-19 disruptions,

• progress on SAI Performance Measurement Framework (PMF) assessments noting the completion of the report for SAI Northern Mariana Islands, and

• recruitment of a pool of technical advisers to build SAI capability and set up best-practice procedures across the PMF’s broad domains.

Members of the Governing Board created a subcommittee to consider and approve a theme and countries of focus for the fourth PASAI Accountability and Transparency Study in 2022.

The Governing Board agreed to an investment in an auditing software upgrade for some SAIs in the region.

Agenda items also included an update on the implementation of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Framework to meet external and internal reporting requirements.

John Ryan, Secretary-General PASAI and Auditor-General of New Zealand, together with the Board and the Secretariat, celebrated the enhancement of SAI Tonga’s independence with recent amendments to the Constitution of Tonga. He acknowledged the hard work of Sefita Tangi, Auditor-General of Tonga, and Tiofilusi Tiueti, Director Technical Support PASAI, for their sustained contributions in achieving this milestone.

The Secretariat expresses its gratitude to the Governing Board members for their ongoing assistance and acknowledges our development partners for their continued support of PASAI and its work in the region.

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Contact information:

Esther Lameko-Poutoa, Chief Executive PASAI, Auckland, New Zealand
E: secretariat@pasai.org P: +64 9 304 1275

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