Indian CAG elected chairman of apex Asian auditor body; environment audit top focus

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, September 7

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India GC Murmu was on Tuesday elected Chairman of the Assembly of Asian Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASOSAI) from 2024-2027 with India set to host the 16th Assembly of ASOSAI in 2024.

After the election, Murmu assured members that during India’s three-year term as Chair of the ASOSAI, he would focus on areas of environment audit and develop frameworks to test compliance of organisations to environment policies, in the wake of climate change and carbon emission challenges.

“First, we will develop a comprehensive framework with environment audit specific definitions and parameters for natural resource accounting dovetailing with the overall framework of sustainable development, he said. Secondly, Supreme Audit Institution of India will seek active participation of members to create process and structures within ASOSAI to address the challenges faced by SAIs in our region in dealing with Big Data with an aim to leverage on artificial intelligence, machine learning and collaborative remote access data audits,” Murmu said.

Emerging technologies, he said, will help augment existing audit competence and accelerate capacity building for performance audit, thereby boosting achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

Murmu informed the members about the state-of-the-art training facilities, IT infrastructure and tools established by SAI India to make auditors future ready.

SAI India has so far trained 6,183 auditors worldwide and has been handholding many SAIs within and outside ASOSAI in emerging areas of audit, Murmu said.

CAG added that India is a signatory to the Environmental Accounting efforts of the UN.

“SAI India actively promotes Natural Resource Accounting as an important environmental assessment tool to estimate the trade-off between value of natural resource usage, environmental impact and economic activities and released a concept paper on Natural Resource Accounting in 2020 involving physical accounting, monetary valuation, and economic accounting,” Murmu said.

The paper envisages short, medium and long-term goals converging with the SDGs set by the UN General Assembly.