Vietnamese Auditor General Tran Sy Thanh (middle) at an online talks with his Cambodian counterpart (Photo: VNA) After 12 years, majortargets of the partnership have been completed, including the promotion oftraditional relations and enhancement of professional capacity of the threecountries, helping raising the position of State Audits of the threecountries in the region and creating a suitable playground for them to learnexperience to join larger multilateral forums.
Long-term cooperationprogrammes
On June 1, 2009, the State audit agencies of Vietnam, Laosand Cambodia signed a memorandum of understand on the outcomes of talks among leaders of the three agencies in Hanoi. They agreed to strengthen theimplementation of contents of the signed bilateral deals, while increasing theorganisation of trainings, conferences, surveys, and experience exchange inbuilding standards, procedures and method of auditing, and conducting jointprogrammes and projects.
They concurred to organise rotated talks to improve theefficiency of their cooperation activities, and propose the government of eachside to consider their adding collaboration contents to inter-governmentalcooperation programmes.
Since their partnership was set up, the three sides have maintained annual conferences in a rotation format to share their knowledge andexperience in matters of common interest.
As of 2014, five conferences had been held to discussdifferent topics. This is an useful forum for all parties to enhance theirprofessional capacity and reinforce their cooperation and friendship for commondevelopment.
In order to further lift up the coordination efficienciesamong the three agencies, at the sixth tripartite conference held in Vientiane,Laos, from November 11-12, 2014, they agreed to hold the conference every twoyears instead of annually. Alongside, they also reached consensus of thechanges in the organisation form of the event, dividing the event into twoseparate meetings, one on issues of shared concern in line with the conference’stheme, and the other gathering top leaders of the three agencies to reachagreements of discussed issues and evaluate outcomes of their cooperation inprevious year and sketch out future cooperation orientations.
The conferences have focused on topical issues of sharedconcern, including the strengthening of management efficiency, the enhancing ofcollaboration between State Audit and parliament, and the elevating of qualityof audit reports and auditing activities, and the sharing of experience in applyingthe International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions(ISSAI).
Particularly, recently, the eighth conference of the Stateaudit agencies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia focused on the implementation ofsustainable development goals of the supreme audit institutions (SAI). Afteryears of effective collaboration, the ties among the three agencies have becometight with high level of mutual understanding and support at internationalforums.
Meanwhile, leaders of the three agencies have regularly heldtheir talks to bolster their cooperation.
State Audit of Vietnam’s role
In November 2018, the eighth tripartite meeting among three State audits of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia washeld in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with the theme of “Audit of preparedness for theimplementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
At the event,Vietnam shared experience in associating the design of auditing plan with theevaluation of the implementation and outcomes of SDGs.
At the same time, Vietnam also highlighted its experience inapplying the guidelines on the audit of SDGs of the INTOSAI DevelopmentInitiative (IDI) in the auditing of Vietnam’s implementation of the goals.
As an independent audit agency, the SAV has accompanied withthe Government of Vietnam in realising SDGs, while making indirect contributionsin the completing of a number of goals, including reducing the multidimensional poverty rate, improving the quality ofliving conditions of ethnic minority communities, and increasing healthinsurance coverage.
Contributions by the SAV helped Vietnam sustain high GDPgrowth in the 2018-2020 period, while ensuring the stability and sustainabilityof the national finance, and raising the role of Vietnam in the region andthe world./.
VNA
