The State Audit Office of the Kingdom of Thailand and The State Audit Organization of Lao PDR work together for the “Support to Financial Audit for the State Audit Organization of Lao PDR” project. This project aiming to strengthen the capacities on financial audit of auditors in Laos with the support from Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) and the German Government was run from January 2017 – June 2018.
Various activities were conducted including conducting needs assessment, assistance from SAI Thailand to SAO Lao to design and develop training modules, conducting training of trainers, delivering trainings to junior auditors of SAO Lao and secondment of SAO Lao staff at the Human Resources and Development of SAI Thailand. All of these activities were conducted to promote the increase of the efficiency and effectiveness of the financial audit performance of SAI Lao to meet ISSAI standards.
To close those programs, a final Project Steering Committee meeting was conducted at the SAI Laos’ office in Vientiane, Lao on 5th September 2018. The event was attended by all involved partners including SAI Laos, SAI Thailand, TICA, the German Support to ASEAN Supreme Audit Institutions (ASEANSAI) project, implemented by GIZ, as well as representatives from the European Union, the national assembly and ministries of Laos. Representatives of the ASEANSAI Training Committee and ASEANSAI Knowledge Sharing Committee were also present.
During the meeting, Thai experts and participating auditors from SAI Lao exchanged experience they gained during 17 months of their journey in the project. The key findings and recommendations of a final project evaluation mission were also presented. To enhance the sustainability of the project outputs in SAI Laos, as well as for future action and replication of similar peer-to-peer approaches within ASEANSAI, participants also delivered some recommendations and suggestions upon the projects. It is expected that in the future, such approach of cooperation will be implemented more in ASEANSAI to gather broader improvement of audit capacity at the region.
