The Strategy for Development of Public Internal Financial Control should contribute to the taxpayers' money being spent in an adequate and cost-effective manner, as was announced today at the meeting in Belgrade.
Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimović stressed that the Strategy for Development of Public Internal Financial Control was an important part of Chapter 32 on Financial control, which, she recalled, had been opened as the first chapter in December 2015.
"This is important, not only because thereby we will meet the EU criteria in this way, but because internal audit in the public sector actually means our full readiness and plan on how to increase the responsibility of managers in the public sector, as well as that of all employees in spending and using public funds. Public funds do not include only our domestic budget, but also the EU funds and all other funds that are available to us as a candidate country," Joksimović told Tanjug.
Joksimović said that it was a good approach, stressing that public funds available to the public sector must be used in a responsible and efficient manner, because that was the money of the taxpayers of Serbia, of Serbia itself.
"Therefore, there is indeed political will and technical readiness to raise and increase accountability through internal audit, a greater number of certified auditors who will actually monitor the responsible, efficient, cost-effective and transparent management of public funds," Joksimović said.
According to her, it is very important for Serbia, at this stage and while still a candidate country, to develop all these mechanisms and to successfully and purposefully, for the benefit of the citizens, use the EU pre-accession funds through projects which are important for development, so that it could responsibly use incomparably more funds in the future once it obtains the membership.
"Not to mention how important it is for us to use the budget responsibly and transparently, so, in this sense, this is a very important Strategy and an important step towards improving financial control over public funds," Joksimović said.
The goal of adopting the Strategy is to incorporate financial management and control and internal audit into the overall public sector management system, in order to use public funds in an effective, efficient and cost-effective manner.
The Conference on the adoption of the Strategy for Development of Public Internal Financial Control in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2017−2020, held today in the Palace of Serbia, was attended by Minister of Finance Dušan Vujović, Minister of European Integration Jadranka Joksimović, Secretary of State in the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government Ivan Bošnjak, Head of the EU Delegation to Serbia Sem Fabrizi and European Commission Representative Raymond Hill.
