CoA eyes more audit contracts overseas

The Commission on Audit seeks to put Philippine state auditors on the global map by bidding for more external auditing contracts with large multilateral organizations.

The practice, CoA said, would also keep the institution abreast with global best practices.

CoA—currently the external auditor of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO)—is now vying for the auditing contract being auctioned off by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna.

In an interview, CoA Chairperson Grace Tan said the agency would strive to reclaim a crucial slot among the panel of auditors of the United Nations in New York by 2014.

“We will seriously bid for that. We’ll start doing that as selection will be by 2013,” Ms. Tan said.

For some 20 years until 2008, the Philippines was included in the UN’s panel of auditors and had maintained an office in New York for this purpose.

The bid for IAEA, Tan said, was “in progress” and the selection would be done in Vienna this September. She said the Philippines was running against India and Spain for this contract. “I hope so,” Tan said, when asked if CoA had a good chance to bag this contract.

In bagging the contract for WHO, the Philippines bested Western heavyweights such as Germany, France and Spain, as well as Southeast Asian neighbor Malaysia, she said.

While getting such offshore contracts entailed more work for CoA, Tan said it also opened up opportunities to remain aligned with global best practices, which helped strengthen the institution. Such contracts are also deemed to be the best training for Philippine auditors.

CoA sends a pool of senior auditors to complete the job for a limited time and on a rotation basis “so there’s no disruption in work at home,” Tan said.

If CoA regains its spot in the UN panel of auditors by 2014, Tan said the institution could “reclaim the honor of being the premier, supreme audit institution in Asia, if not the world.”

In another forum, Tan said efforts to take on overseas assignments were crucial despite the CoA having so much work in its own backyard.