More Efficient Public Audits for Less Corruption in BiH

Donor: The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency SIDA

Duration: March 2019-March 2022

Amount: 950.000 KM

Project is contributing to a more responsible spending of budget funds and to reduction of corruption in the public institutions in BiH.

Public audit services in the entities of BiH every year audit only 10% of public and their findings mostly detect serious breaches of the Public Procurement Law and the Employment Law, which indicate a high corruption that unnecessarily spend about 20% of the public institutions' budget (about 2 billion KM = 1 billion of Euro). 

Half of audited public institutions are chosen to be audited almost randomly, so a good part of the institutions have never been subject to an audit, and those that have been – they will not be audited again for years, and no one will control implementation of the recommendations from the previous reports until public auditors come again and review previous report. 

Since there are no legal sanctions prescribed for failure to comply with auditors' recommendations, they are generally not implemented, thus leaving open space for continuing misusing public resources and feeding corruption.

The project involves creation of a public e-database and recommendations from public audit reports as well as the monitoring and analysis of the implementation of the given recommendations. Also, change of a law regulation will be initiated in order to increase and individualize penalties for failing to meet auditors' recommendations, as well as to reform the role and practice of parliamentary auditing committees. At the same time, efforts will be made to establish coordination bodies between prosecutors' offices and public audit in order to exchange information and improve synergies in dealing with corruption in public institutions.