World Bank

All the activities regarding the establishment of the Office during the process of appointment of management, including the starting operational phases have been coordinated and monitored in organization of a World Bank.

During the establishment of the most important functions of the Office, the management was given following assistance: all the concept materials, management guidelines, organizational and internal structure proposal, business and financial plan proposal, concept materials and guidelines for performing of audit, including audit questionnaires and many other materials.

World Bank has organized two seminars on basic audit principles, as a part of preparation process for hiring and basic education for the Office personnel. Upon an invitation of the Office, the World Bank representative has participated in a process of selection of the audit staff (all the interviews with candidates for senior auditor posts have been performed with the participation of this representative).

World Bank has given extremely large support to the Office capacity building, especially by procuring appropriate financial funds from the Bosnia and Herzegovina Budget, and in obtaining the profile of the Office as it is prescribed by the Law.

Swedish National Audit Office (SNAO)

Swedish National Audit Office has accepted a concept of the institutional cooperation and technical assistance in March 2000, which encompasses a support for the establishment of the institutions of external, public audit in Bosnia and Herzegovina (at the state and entities level). Project has been defined as a support to capacity building on a long-term basis (three to five years). After preparations that have lasted for several months and couple of missions performed by SNAO in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the BiH Audit Office, Audit Office of Sector in Republic of Srpska, Audit Office of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with SNAO, in November 2000.

MoU provided possibilities for education and technical assistance, which shall be financed by the Government of Sweden, through the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) in the amount of 10.6 SEK millions by 31^st of December 2001.

International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI)

INTOSAI is a professional organization, gathering all the supreme audit institutions of the UN member countries, and which plays a main role on promoting the policy and development of the auditing of governments' accounts and activities, as well as promoting the sound management and responsibility for financial issues of the of member countries governments.

The Office has shown a special interest for obtaining the INTOSAI membership, both in order to achieve international recognition and to secure the support that the INTOSAI members enjoy within the audit performing in a way which allows the exchange of information and experiences in audit and evaluation of the audit results. Especially we would like to stress the obligation of the Office in achieving the high quality of audit operations and adopting the common standards of audit performing which is prescribed within the law, and which would be an additional reason for interest of this Office regarding the INTOSAI membership.

According to the newest information the admission of SAI BiH into an INTOSAI membership shall be put to an agenda of a 48^th meeting of INTOSAI Steering Board, to be held on 22^nd of October 2001, in Seul, Republic of Korea.