site.btaAudit Offices of Bulgaria and Croatia Will Help Macedonian Counterpart Improve Efficiency of Audits

Sofia, September 26 (BTA) - A Bulgarian-Croatian consortium will work to help the Macedonian Audit Office improve its administrative capacity and the efficiency of its audits. The consortium of the national audit offices of Bulgaria and Croatia will be established under a EU-funded twinning project.

An agreement about the establishment of the consortium was signed here Tuesday by the leaders of the two organizations, Tsvetan Tsvetkov of Bulgaria and Ivan Klesic of Croatia.

Macedonia has picked the Bulgarian Audit Office as the project leader, which will be aided in the project activities by the Croatian Audit Office.

This is the first EU-funded twinning project with the Bulgarian administration acting as project leader.

The project has a value of 1.4 million euro.

The Bulgarian and Croatian partners have confirmed their resolve to work so as to complete the project over 21 months.

Tsvetkov pointed out at the signing ceremony that the audit offices of Bulgaria and Croatia have walked their road of developing and improving their performance, and the time has come to share their experience here in the Balkans and help Macedonia on its road to EU membership.

Klesic said all three audit offices will benefit from the implementation of the project.

The areas in which the Macedonian auditors will be trained, include the international auditing standards, establishing a mechanism for interaction with Parliament and capacity-building in the area of IT and communication.

The Bulgarian Audit Office says that with this twinning project it will transition from being a trainee organization into being a trainer organization and that its institutional growth has been achieved, among other things, through a number of EU-funded international projects.