By: L.N. Reklai

Peer Review Audit of Palau’s Office of Public Auditor (OPA) covering period of October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2017 was recently released stating that OPA has complied with Government Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States.

Peer Review was provided by the Association of Pacific Islands Public Auditors (APIPA) in compliance with Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS) to review internal quality control of the system of audit organization and determine whether the internal control system provides reasonable assurance of compliance with Government Auditing Standards.

Letter from the Peer Review Team was sent to the offices of the President of the Republic of Palau, President of the Senate of the 10th OEK and Speaker of the House of the 10th OEK.

“It is our opinion that the Republic of Palau’s Office of Public Auditor’s internal quality control system was suitably designed and was operated effectively to provide reasonable assurance of compliance with Government Auditing Standards  for audits..”, stated the letter issued by Association of Pacific Islands Public Auditors.

There are three possible results of compliance of a peer review from APIPA; Full Compliance(PASS), Satisfactory (Pass with Deficiencies) and Noncompliance (FAIL).  Full Compliance means that the audit organization was in full compliance with Government Auditing Standards and reviewers express their opinion that quality control system “was suitably designed and operating effectively to provide reasonable assurance of compliance with applicable General Auditing Standards.”

Peer Review gave Palau OPA a Full Pass in accordance with APIPA Peer Review Guide.

Public Auditor Saturnino Tewid expressed his satisfaction with the result of the review.

On matter of OPA’s recent budget cut and its impact on the upcoming APIPA conference hosted in Palau, Public Auditor say that they are working to manage the cost of the upcoming Conference.  He said about 300 have signed up but some are having challenges with flights into Palau.

“We are trying to manage costs and another means of doing that will be to go paperless.  U.S. Department of State which have been supporting this program over the years, usually print these large folders of instructional materials and ship here and that cost is quite large,” added PA Tewid.

The conference is slated for the first week of August of this year.