Today, July 1, 2013, Igor Corman, Chairman of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova visited the Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova (CoA).
Serafim Urechean, the President of the CoA offered the opportunity to visit the institution subdivisions, familiarizing Mr. Corman with the CoA's technical equipment, staff training opportunities and employees work conditions.
Igor Corman was informed by members of the CoA, heads of departments and services about the institution's activities, achievements and performances, the problems faced and future aspirations.
Angela Pascaru, member of CoA spoke about the most important historical events in the CoA's activity, strategic development of the institution, ongoing and future projects to strengthen the A capacities - the Twinning Project - primary objectives and actions of the future cooperation with this EU tool to strengthen public audit. She also underlined the importance of having an efficient collaboration between the supreme audit institution (ISA) of the country with the legislative, executive bodies, law enforcement structures in order to have a high level of the CoA's recommendations implementation. In this context, Mrs. Pascaru spoke about the importance of cooperation with civil society, providing information about the cooperation project with the Institute for Public Policy "Recommendations of the Court of Accounts - a tool for efficient use of public money."
Serafim Urechean noted that the cooperation with the Parliament had been improved in recent years, highlighting the importance of obtaining a positive trend in consolidating these bilateral relations. The CoA had few possibilities to increase the efficiency of recommendations submitted, as the institution had not been delegated rights to sanction for failure to implement the CoA's recommendations. Mr. Urechean referred in context to a legislative initiative providing administrative sanctions for non-enforcement of the CoA's recommendations.
Referring to the best practices of cooperation between Isa and Parliament, the CoA's President spoke about EU countries, such as Sweden, the Czech Republic, where there had been created a special committee aimed to collaborate with ISA in the parliamentary committee of finance and economy. Mr. Urechean takeover reiterated the importance of learning from the best practices in this area, in order to improve bilateral cooperation for the benefit of society.
Serafim Urechean informed the audience about the CoA's experience in providing transparency and access to information for society.
Ecaterina Paknehad, member of the Court of Accounts talked about the Coa's cooperation with external partners for institutional development - World Bank, the Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO) - paying attention to the current phase of collaboration CoA - SNAO, in the framework of the third technical cooperation project scheduled for 2013-2015 years. She also informed about the negotiations for signing a new technical cooperation agreement with the World Bank to strengthen the institution capacity in information technology auditing.
Valeriu Chitan, the CoA's member talked about the importance of cooperation while developing annual activity plan of the institution to define topics of major importance for the country. Also, Mr. Chitan considered helpful creating a specialized structure within the parliament, which would monitor the ISA's activity and would provide the necessary support.
Igor Corman, the President of the Moldovan Parliament underlined the importance of the SAI's activity for the country, the CoA being the public authority empowered with the right to verify the correct use of public resources and state property management. Mr. Corman assured the CoA's management that he will make any effort to provide efficient and dynamic cooperation between the Legislative body and the SAI. In this context, the President of the Parliament mentioned the importance of taking a proactive role for CoA to cooperate with the Parliament, in order to achieve a high level of execution of the recommendations submitted to audited entities. Igor Corman declared the Parliamend would also ensure the independence and autonomy of the CoA, concentrating efforts on the concept of dynamic bilateral cooperation, identifying effective ways to increase the impact of the Court of Accounts recommendations.