20 Public Accounting Firms to Audit the Government
JAKARTA – The Audit Board of the Republic of Indonesia (BPK) assures the state financial audit for the second semester of 2015 will involve public accounting firms, although it will be applied to all regional governments.
The BPK’s Chairman, Harry Azhar Azis, said that there are at least 20 public accounting firms chosen after a selection process conducted by the BPK. Those public audit agencies plan to start auditing the state finance in June 2016. “Thus, not all BPK’s auditors will be allocated for the regular financial audits”. He said in Jakarta on Wednesday (1/13).
He mentioned the early plan was to involve public accounting firms to regularly audit ministries/institutions and regional governments in each semester.
However, in the meantime, he further said, the plan was changed as the BPK decided that it will involve public accounting firms in auditing entities in central and regional governments which have gained unqualified opinions for several times. “We decided to apply it to only several entities so that audit risks are not too high, those are where public accounting firms will conduct their audits,” he said.
Although the BPK is supported by public accounting firms, which are majorly freelancers, he continues, not all audits will be handled by public accounting firms. “For secret governmental agencies, they will still be audited by the BPK. Public accounting firms will only some audits which are general and small in number.”
Further for the first step, he said, audits conducted by public accounting firms will be supervised by the BPK, so that not all audits will be totally given to independent auditors.
According to business reports, there are at least 188 public accounting firms registered in the BPK. That number is far smaller if compared to the number of BPK’s audit entities which reach more than 500 objects in total. Thus, due to this limited number (of auditors), according to Harry, the regular audits are only conducted to several entities.
The Head of Public Relations and International Cooperation, Yudi Ramdan Budiman, previously said that the BPK’s effort to involve the third party in the regular audit in each semester is due to the lack of the number of auditors in the BPK to conduct all audits. “ Ideally, five auditors per region or city. In the provincial level, we need 9 auditors.” (M.G. Noviarizal Fernandez)
Bisnis Indonesia