Estimating the efficiency of the state bodies activities on the border control check points between the Russian Federation, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland for the control of the movement of goods and vehicles

Report ID: 116

In october 2008, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, the  Audit Office of Lithuania, the Committee of State Control of the Republic of Belarus and  the Supreme Chamber of Control of the Republic of Poland signed a Cooperation Agreement in order to conduct a parallel audit  on estimating the efficiency of the state bodies (services) activities on the border control check points between their respective countries in the course of the goods and vehicles movement within the period from September to October of 2008.

The Parties proceeded from the assumption that the parallel audit, performed in the frames of their national law will help carrying out the following tasks: to improve efficiency of the state authorities (services), which take charge of control over the movement of goods and vehicles on the border control check points between the Russian Federation, Republic of Belarus, Republic of Lithuania, and Republic of Poland, and to create conditions, which contribute to the optimization of cargo traffic.

Source: https://www.vkontrole.lt/en/docs/Memorandum_with_supplement_eng.pdf

Implementation of the Rail Baltica Project Cooperative Audit

Report ID: 252

In 2014, the governments of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania established the Rail Baltica joint venture—an equally-shared endeavor ratified in a 2017 intergovernmental agreement. Rail Baltica, to be delivered by 2026, is the largest railway infrastructure project in the region and aims to integrate the Baltic States with the European railway network.

In 2016, the SAIs of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania signed a Memorandum of Understanding to monitor the development and implementation of this unique and unprecedented project.

The audit focused on project governance, internal control system operations, as well as long term financial resource availability. Because the audit was based on a forward-looking approach, the audit team looked to analyze particular conditions, such as assuring an effective, economic procurement and contract management framework was established, functioning and able to address any deficiencies found during the audit.

Fieldwork began in 2018, and the audit team, consisting of at least two auditors from each SAI, examined the audit questions and criteria and agreed on main conclusions, which became the audit report’s basis. A steering committee (one representative per SAI) was instituted to decide on any significant issues arising during the audit.

Each SAI separately performed a quality control check at the audit’s end but jointly drafted the final report, which was electronically signed by all Auditors General and simultaneously published in all three Baltic States.

The joint audit led to recommendations that will improve the Rail Baltica project’s governance, operations and financial planning, and the SAIs of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania will continue the already established cooperation to jointly monitor audit recommendation implementation.

Source: https://www.eurosai.org/en/databases/audits/Implementation-of-the-Rail-Baltica-project/

AFROSAI-E and IDI Cooperative Audit on Extractive Industries

Report ID: 253

Under the framework of the IDI/AFROSAI-E Cooperative Audit Project on Extractive Industries,  a series of parallel performance audits on the topic of National Content in the oil and gas sector took place between 2014 and 2015 with the participation of the SAIs of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

The original purpose of the project was to help SAIs identify risk areas in the Extractive Industries area and help them formulate an audit approach that they could execute. The ultimate goal was that each SAI should complete an audit on a topic related to public sector management of the extractive industries sector. 

The SAIs  conducted a performance audit to examine, among others, the benefits in terms of increased local employment and use of local suppliers that result from the oil and gas industry. The SAIs drew a distinction between local and national, because in some countries the governments were concerned with benefit accruing to nationals, whereas others had specific aims of seeing benefits accruing to local communities affected by the oil and gas industry. 

The report outlines the methods applied by the project, the results achieved and the experiences for future projects of this type.

Joint Report on Parallel Audits of Expenditure on the Construction of the Motorway Prague – Dresden

Report ID: 276

In 2005 and 2006, the two supreme audit institutions of Germany and the Czech Republic conducted parallel audits of expenditure on the construction of the motorway Prague – Dresden (D 8 motorway in the Czech Republic and the A 17 motorway in the Federal Republic of Germany).

The motorways are connected by a border bridge co-financed by the two countries. By working together SAI Germany was able to audit in depth the efficiency of the funds used for building the border bridge. As a result of working closely SAI Czech Republic  was furnished for comparative purposes with the necessary data of German cost levels of bridges and tunnels.

As part of the joint audit effort motorway bridges on the D 8 and A 17 were compared based on the prices per square metre of area of the bridge structure. The statistical analysis of prices made it possible to identify bridges that came at a high cost per square metre. This analysis revealed that the border bridge was the most expensive bridge as compared to other large bridges having a length of over 100 metres. The price increase could also be attributed to the delays occurred in the tender procedure.

When auditors analysed the costs of tunnel structures they found that the prices of tunnels are considerably higher on the D 8 motorway than the prices of comparable tunnels in Germany.

Benefits
The cooperation achieved the objectives of both audit institutions. The two supreme audit institutions developed a database of the prices of bridges and tunnels that can be relied on in future audits. 

SOURCE: https://www.nku.cz/assets/publications-documents/other-publications/paralelni-kontroly-dalnice-praha-drazdany.pdf

Report on the Coordinated Audit Tax and subsidy support for climate and energy policy in the Czech and Slovak Republics

Report ID: 296

On the basis of a Cooperation Agreement between the Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic and the Supreme Audit Office of the Czech Republic, both SAIs carried out a coordinated audit on tax and subsidy support for climate and energy policy in their respective countries.

The aim of the audits was to verify whether the support in the Czech and Slovak Republic is set up to contribute effectively to the fulfilment of objectives in selected areas of climate-energy policy while maintaining the long-term sustainability of public revenues. Selected areas were the transport sector and photovoltaic support.

 The theme of coordinated audits has been selected on the basis of the fact that both Member States, based on common European legislation, apply different support systems at national level in selected areas of climate and energy policy, aiming to meet the basic climate and energy objectives of the European Union  by 2020.

The EU has set ambitious climate-energy policy objectives, the successful enforcement of which includes a set of measures, including various financial instruments. Each EU Member State can choose its own procedures and tools to achieve the objectives. This gives space for comparing the effectiveness and efficiency of the instruments chosen between the individual countries. Based on the achieved indicator values, the Supreme Audit Institutions compared the quality parameters of the support and evaluated their impacts on the achievement of the EU and national targets. The coordinated audit of the SAO CR and the SAO SR again proves that both institutions attach great importance to international comparisons.

For comparison purposes, financial values and indicators were compared in euros. Amounts in Czech crowns were converted into euros at the exchange rate of the CNB as at 17 September 2019, i.e., according to the CNB € 1 = CZK 25.88.

Source: https://www.nku.gov.sk/documents/10272/1542112/2020+-+Tax+and+subsidy+support+for+climate+and+energy+policy+in+the+Czech+and+Slovak+Republics.pdf