The Audit Chamber (AC) is a constitutional body, and it is considered one of the most important state bodies of the state. The necessity of the mentioned law was caused for regulating the relations connected with the legal status of the Audit Chamber, the goals and guarantees of the activity, the organization of the Audit Chamber activity, the audit implementation, as well as the service in the Chamber. The Chair of the NA Standing Committee on Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Gevorg Papoyan said at the extraordinary sitting of the Committee held on January 10, presenting in the first reading the draft on Making Amendments and Addenda to the law on Audit Chamber and the package of the enclosed presented drafts authored by Arusyak Manavazyan, Narek Grigoryan and Edgar Hakobyan and me.
According to the key rapporteur, the draft was made up as a result of the joint lasting work of the NA, the UN Development Programme, the Audit Chamber, and it has numerous co-authors. The criteria existing in the sphere served as a basis for implementing the reforms.
Conditioned by the necessity of solving a number of problems, it was proposed by the draft to introduce service in the Audit Chamber as a new kind of state service, and give an opportunity for regulating the strict procedure issues on the audit organization with the internal legal acts of the Audit Chamber. It is proposed to fix the activities of the budgetary entries, the lithosphere users, the Central Bank, the accredited governors of the public property, the legal persons who received state means to audit the mandate of the Audit Chamber. It is designed to ensure accessibility for the secrets and individual data established by law, at the same time designing responsibility for the use of that information, as well as to introduce institutional structures for internal audit, the executive, audit, ethics and quality control committees of the Audit Chamber. An opportunity of payment in consonance with the market one for the qualified specialist will be designed, mechanisms of position classification characteristic to auditing sphere, the qualitative requirements and the audit post-control being submitted to them will be introduced as implementing the proposals of the Audit Chamber and a toolset aimed at boosting the positive changes in the citizens’ life.
The Committee members highlighted the initiative.
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The deputy of the Civil Contract Faction Arsen Torosyan inquired how expedient was submission of medical secret information to the Audit Chamber. In response to the question, Gevorg Papoyan noted that because of absence of the audits in the medical sphere there are substantial doubts that part of the amount of money being provided to the sphere disappears, hence a strong need arises to have the information on which the state budget means are spent.
“The amount of money paid by the public and the state should be controllable in order any employee of the Medical Centre does not think that he/she can spend the non-designed state means hiding behind the medical secret,” Gevorg Papoyan said substantiating the provision of the draft law.
The Chairman of the Audit Chamber also touched upon the topic under debate. Atom Janjughazyan noted that by the law in force the state secret is accessible to the AC relevant officials, and it is available for the officials of other state bodies.
“The draft is about creating a precondition for exercising the authority prescribed by the Constitution, because it is an exceptional case by the Constitution, when a body is created, to whom it is assigned to carry out an audit towards the legality and effectiveness of the use of state and community budget funds, as well as state and municipal property,” Atom Janjughazyan noted and added that it is necessary for the implementation of the AC function that the secret information will be available for the structure.
In his co-report the Minister of Finance Vahe Hovhannisyan informed that the proposals of the Executive on the draft were approved a few minutes ago, at the regular sitting of the Government. The Minister said that the pre-indicated goals are acceptable by law for the Executive, but there are certain observations, which contain risks.
The key rapporteur Gevorg Papoyan made a proposal, according to which, the voting of the issue was postponed up to two months. The Committee Chair informed that a work debate will be held on the draft, after which at the next sitting of the Committee the revised version of the package of drafts will be put for voting.
During the sitting by the debated next draft the SRC Deputy Chairman Artur Manukyan proposed to remove the contradiction existing in the laws on Civil Service and on Inner Audit, as well as to design certain exception of the for appointing a head of the Sub-division of the Internal Audit for making the process more effective, flowing, flexible and purposeful.
According to the representative of the Government, during the period from the first to the second reading the legislative body has not submitted proposals to the executive body, thus amendments have not been made.
The draft law on Amending the law on Internal Audit being under debate in the second reading was approved by a recorded vote 4 in favour with 1 abstention at the sitting of the Committee.
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia