His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa underlined the government’s keenness to boost auditing and tighten up accountability to protect public money and ensure its best use within the framework of probity and transparency.
HRH the Premier was speaking as he received at Gudaibiya Palace today President of the National Audit Office (NAO) Hassan bin Khalifa Al-Jalahma who submitted to him the 13th annual National Audit Report 2016/2017. He stressed the government’s ongoing adoption of strategies and initiatives to ensure the best use of public money and promote internal auditing to prevent any irregularities.

HRH the Prime Minister hailed NAO’s supervisory role to upgrade performance, ensure accountability and boost transparency. He praised professionalism characterising the NAO’s reports, stressing their role in improving public money management. 

After the meeting, the NAO President said that he had had the honour to submit the NAO’s 14th annual report 2016/2017 to HRH the Premier as required by article (19) of NAO Law. He added the office had completed the financial, administrative and performance auditing for the fiscal year 2016/2017 as part of its strategy to assist the parties under its capacity to run their affairs in an institutional way according to existing laws and regulations. The aim, he noted, is to help them improve their performance and mend rifts that could be exploited to commit financial and administrative irregularities and tamper with public money.

The NAO President underscored the role of the office in controlling public money and rationalizing expenditure to better serve the national economy and sustainable development. He also stressed the office’s contribution to enhancing the performance of the parties under its capacity and developing their financial and accountancy systems. He lauded the interest shown by the executive branch in the office’s reports which helped carried out the recommendations, hailing cooperation of the ministers, Heads and officials of the relevant parties.

Al-Jalahma commended HRH the Prime Minister’s support to NAO and his valuable directives to the competent parties to carry out the office’s recommendations.