Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Girish Chandra Murmuhas been re-appointed as the chairman of the panel of External Auditors of the United Nations for 2021.
Presently, the panel consists of 13 countries — India, Germany, Chile, China, United Kingdom, France, Philippines, Switzerland, Italy, Ghana, Indonesia, Canada and Russia. The CAG of India was initially elected as Chairman of the Panel for 2020. As the chairman, the CAG of India plays a key role in achieving the panel’s objective of greater degree of collaboration and coordination, and exchange of information on audit methods and findings, among the Panel members.
CAG leads the panel as a distinctive forum to support the delivery of high quality, standards-based assurance, to ensure that reported financial information provides a transparent and accurate basis for the financial decisions made by the United Nations and its specialised agencies.
Like any other organisation, the accounts and management operations of the United Nations, the Specialized Agencies (WHO, FAO, WFP, WIPO, and others) and the International Atomic Energy Agency are required to be audited and reported on periodically by independent external auditors.
The UN General Assembly in 1959 established the Panel of External Auditors, comprising the individual external auditors of the United Nations system, who are also Heads of Supreme Audit Institutions, that is, Comptroller and Auditors General of their respective countries. The CAG of India has been the external auditor of various international organisations.
He has earlier also been on the UN Board of Auditors from 1993 to 1999 and from 2014 to 2020. Presently, he is the external auditor of the World Health Organization, Geneva (2020 – 2023) and Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome (2020 – 2025) and Inter Parliamentary Union (2020-2022).
In recent past, he has been the External Auditor of World Food Programme, World Intellectual Property Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, UN World Tourism Organization, International Organization for Migration, International Maritime Organization, Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and others.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India is one of the largest supreme audit institutions in the world, with a large human resource pool which is professionally qualified in diverse fields and is highly regarded in the international community of Supreme Audit Institutions. The CAG of India chairs the Knowledge Sharing Committee – one of the four major committees of International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) besides being a member of a number of other standards setting committees and sub-committees. ( IANS )
