Chief Directors attend forum on auditing

Accra, June 24, GNA - The Internal Audit Agency and World Bank on Thursday, jointly held a forum on risk-based audit for chief directors, heads and senior staff of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to sensitize them on the new approach to internal auditing. It was also to galvanize support of the participants mainly in decision-making level positions at the MDAs to understand and welcome the new concept of risk-based auditing.

The forum forms part of the broad World Bank's Technical Assistance Projects targeted at strengthening statutory oversight institutions such as the Internal Audit Agency, Ghana Audit Service and Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Mr Robert Degraft Hanson, World Bank Representative said the Technical Assistance Projects were also aimed at the general public financial management reform programmes of government to increase efficiency of the audit function in government ministries by targeting priority and high risk areas.

He explained that risk assessment was a critical part of modern auditing, which focused the auditor's attention from simply auditing compliance with rule and procedures to an understanding of key risk and directing audit attention to these risk areas. Mr Hanson said secondly, traditional audits in government had focused primarily on compliance with rules and procedures, often in a manner where audit became an integral part of the control procedure. "The resultant audits often produce assessment and recommendations, which do not sufficiently contribute to the achievement of management's objectives within accepted risk thresholds", Mr Hanson added. He announced that as part of the programme, staff of the Agency made up of mainly auditors, would be attending a three-week training programme at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) to train them further on risk based auditing.

It is expected that at the end of the training, a high-level risk profiling of the audit portfolio as well as appropriate structuring and deployment of audit resources in high risk areas would be achieved. Mr Atta Senya, Deputy Auditor-General on behalf of the Auditor-General, said the Audit Service had adopted the risk based audit approach as part of the several methodologies applied in the discharge of external auditing function as part of efforts to ensure that Ghana's auditing services delivery conformed to international standards.

He said often when organisations or institutions fail, it was because of several related risk event occurring simultaneously and not just one thing that went wrong, adding that internal audit should therefore take a pragmatic approach to the development of risk based auditing, undertaking its own risk assessment process to determine the precise level of work required. Mr Senya urged all MDAs and Municipal, Metropolitan, District Assemblies (MMDAs) to welcome the new auditing methodology as part of their daily life and cooperate with the internal and external auditors, who might come to seek, identify, evaluate and comment on risks associated with their institutions to find solutions to problems. 24 June 10