Comptroller And Auditor General Of India Elected Chairman Of ASOSAI

G C Murmu, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India have been elected as the Chairman of the Assembly of Asian Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASOSAI) from 2024-2027. 

The 56th Governing Board of ASOSAI elected G C Murmu and approval was conveyed by the 15th Assembly of ASOSAI today. The CAG, as the Chairman, will be the Chief Executive of ASOSAI and represent ASOSAI in its dealings with national and international organizations, informed the CAG in an official statement. 

Meanwhile, India is also going to host the 16th Assembly of ASOSAI in 2024.  

After the election, the CAG assured the members that during SAI India’s three-year term as Chair of the ASOSAI, SAI India will focus on the areas of environmental audit and leveraging emerging technologies for audit. First, we would work towards developing a comprehensive framework with environment audit specific definitions and parameters for natural resource accounting dovetailing with the overall framework of sustainable development, Murmu said.

"Secondly, SAI India will seek active participation of members to create processes and structures within ASOSAI to address the challenges faced by SAIs in our region in dealing with Big Data with an aim to leverage on artificial intelligence, machine learning and collaborative remote access data audits. In fact, these emerging technologies will also help to augment existing audit competence as well as accelerate capacity building for performance audits, apart from regular financial certification audits. SAI India believes that the use of IT and other advanced emerging technologies are the foundation pillars of achieving the SDGs; it becomes imperative for SAIs to integrate these tools in their auditing practices," he added. 

Murmu informed the members about the art training facilities, IT infrastructure and tools established by SAI India to make auditors future-ready. These training facilities include the International Centre for Information Systems & Audit (iCISA), Centre for Data Management & Analytics (CDMA), the International Centre for Environmental Audit & Sustainable Development (iCED), the National Academy of Audit & Accounts, and the 12 Regional Training Centres. Till now, SAI India has trained 6183 auditors across the world and have been hand-holding many SAIs within and outside ASOSAI in emerging areas of the audit.

The CAG further added that India is a signatory to the Environmental Accounting efforts of the UN. 

"SAI India actively promotes Natural Resource Accounting as an important environmental assessment tool to estimate the trade-off between the value of natural resource usage, environmental impact and economic activities and released a concept paper on Natural Resource Accounting in 2020 involving physical accounting, monetary valuation, and economic accounting. The paper envisages short, medium and long-term goals converging with the SDGs set by the UN General Assembly. We believe this would also complement the efforts taken by the ASOSAI Working Group on Environment on topics of climate change and carbon emissions," the CAG said in an official statement. 

Murmu said that SAI India will be happy to share our learning experience, experts and facilities for capacity building among the member SAIs of ASOSAI with a special focus on the areas of environment, emerging technologies, and natural resource accounting.

ASOSAI is one of the Regional Groups of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) which aims to promote understanding and cooperation among member institutions through the exchange of ideas and experiences in the field of public audit. Established in 1979 with 11 members. The Membership of the ASOSAI consists of Charter Members, Members and Associate Members. The membership has since grown to 47 SAIs. The Assembly consists of all members of the Organization and meets once every three years.