Manama, Oct. 21 (BNA): The Deputy King, His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, today received the Auditor-General of the National Audit Office (NAO), HE Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, who presented His Royal Highness with the 18th NAO Annual Report 2020-2021, at Riffa Palace.
His Royal Highness underlined the importance of strengthening accountability and responsibility across government workstreams to achieve the Kingdom’s comprehensive development goals, led by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
His Royal Highness emphasised the importance of upholding the principles of integrity, honesty, and professionalism across government agencies to ensure the preservation and sustainability of public funds that benefit the Kingdom and its citizens.
His Royal Highness highlighted that the Kingdom’s development is a continuous process that requires the collaboration of public service professionals to support effective practices and internal control mechanisms across government agencies.
His Royal Highness commended the role played by the NAO in safeguarding public funds and furthering transparency and integrity across the public sector, noting their professionalism and contributions to providing ethical financial, compliance, and performance audits.
His Royal Highness highlighted the government agencies’ commitment to implementing recommendations within the NAO report and welcomed their continued cooperation with the NAO, which has contributed to achieving the Kingdom’s goals.
His Royal Highness stressed the importance for government agencies that have administrative and financial observations of non-compliance to take the necessary measures to correct these observations and ensure they are not repeated in future reports.
For his part, HE Shaikh Ahmed expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to meet His Royal Highness, highlighting the NOA’s commitment to achieving its goals by expanding its services to include forensic and digital auditing.
HE Shaikh Ahmed further highlighted HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister’s continued commitment to overseeing the implementation of the NAO recommendations across the public sector, which has provided effective public sector governance and has furthered the Kingdom’s development.
HE Shaikh Ahmed outlined that NAO’s auditing efforts include various economic, social, health, and environmental sectors across the Kingdom, including focusing on the financial aspects and the performance and efficiency of government agencies. Additionally, a number of oversight tasks were carried out on topics of importance in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic
