09.09.2021

CCI: NO ONE OF THREE AUDITED INSTITUTIONS IN ZENICA-DOBOJ CANTON RECEIVES FULLY UNQUALIFIED AUDIT REPORT - THE BALL IS IN THE COURT OF AUDITED INSTITUTIONS AND ZENICA-DOBOJ ASSEMBLY

The Audit Office of the Institutions in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has as of 7 September 2021 published all three reports planned for this year for the Zenica-Doboj Canton (ZDC): Report on the audit of the financial statements of ZDC 2020, Report on the audit of the financial statements of the Ministry of Economy of ZDC 2020 and Report on the audit of the financial statements of the Health Insurance Fund of ZDC 2020. No one of the three institutions received a fully unqualified audit report.

Auditor's report on the financial audit of ZDC 2020 (Budget of ZDC) contains a qualified opinion drawing the attention to the compliance with statutory regulations. The Government of ZDC was provided 26 recommendations, whereof five are new recommendations and 21 recommendations were carried over from the 2018 Report on the financial audit.

Auditor's report on the financial audit of the Ministry of Economy of ZDC 2020 contains a qualified opinion both in the report on the financial statements and the report on statutory compliance. This is the first time that the Audit Office of the Institutions in the FBiH performs audit of this Ministry. The 2020 audit report provided ten recommendations for the Ministry.

Auditor's report on the financial audit of the ZDC Health Insurance Fund for 2020 contains an unqualified opinion in the report on the financial statements and a qualified opinion in the report on statutory compliance. A total of 24 recommendations were provided to the Fund, whereof 14 are new recommendations, while ten recommendations were carried over from the 2016 Report on the financial statements. 

The Audit Office has completed its share of the work in this extremely important process of monitoring the spending of the public funds that contributes to making the spending transparent, accountable, and efficient, in order to provide better public services. The ball is in the court of the audited institutions and their responsible for the expenditure of the public funds. Auditors identified the omissions and provided the recommendations for the institutions to remove these omissions. The Law on Audit of the Institutions in the FBiH requires the audited institutions to submit to the Audit Office a Plan of actions for overcoming the omissions and irregularities identified in the audit report within 60 days from receiving the audit report.

The Centres for Civic Initiatives (CCI) call on those responsible in the audited institutions to submit their response to the Audit Office setting forth the actions taken in line with the auditor’s reports and the Law on Public Audit and prepare a Plan for the implementation of the recommendations to remove the identified irregularities.

There is a high number of unrealized recommendations and those that are carried over from the previous reports, which indicates a need for the ZDC Assembly to monitor the implementation of recommendations. The Centres for Civic Initiatives (CCI) call on members of the ZDC Assembly to timely review auditor's reports together with plans for the removal of shortcomings and pass adequate conclusions to allow the implementation of the recommendations and monitoring of the implementation process. 

The Project “More Effective Public Audit for Less Corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina” is implemented by the Centres for Civic Initiatives (CCI) with the support of Sweden. The project aims to contribute to more accountable spending of the budgetary funds and less corruption in the public institutions in BiH.