BPK Shares its Experiences in Chairing INTOSAI WGEA at the Annual WGEI Steering Committee Meeting
JAKARTA, BPK Public Relations - After previously joining the Virtual Meeting of the INTOSAI Working Group on Extractive Industries (WGEI) Steering Committee as an observer on August 11, 2020, the Audit Board of the Republic of Indonesia (BPK) was invited to participate in the Annual WGEI Steering Committee Meeting held virtually on Thursday.
The meeting was attended by all members of the WGEI Steering Committee, namely Uganda (WGEI Chairman), South Africa, the United States, Ecuador, Fiji, Ghana, India, Iraq, Norway and Zambia. BPK as the observer of the WGEI Steering Committee and AFROSAI-E as the observer of the WGEI also participated on the online meeting. The BPK delegates included Senior Advisor of Environment and Sustainable Development Edward G. H. Simanjuntak, Director of Evaluation and Audit Reporting Juska Meidy Enyke Sjam, Deputy Director of Audit IV.B.1 Erwansyah Fuad, Deputy Director of Audit VII.A.3 Winarno, and the team of Public Relations and International Cooperation Bureau.
The meeting was officially opened by the Assistant Auditor General of Uganda, Keto Nyapendi Kayemba, representing the Chairman of WGEI and the Auditor General of Uganda, John F. S. Muwanga, who were unable to attend. Kayemba explained that the meeting was the sixth WGEI annual meeting, which would had been originally held in Equador. On behalf of the Chairman of WGEI, Kayemba expressed his appreciation to all meeting delegates, having committed to attend despitethe time difference for several countries. He reminded that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the development of projects according to the 2020-2022 Work Plan, the results of which would be reported to the INTOSAI Knowledge Sharing Committee Meeting on September 21, 2020. He further hoped that the meeting outputs would be useful for all SAIs, as expressed in the INTOSAI motto "mutual experience benefits all". Kayemba also officially welcomed the BPK as the observer of the WGEI Steering Committee.
Represented by Edward GH Simanjuntak and Juska Meidy Enyke Sjam, the BPK presented its experienceswhen chairing and managing the INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Audit (WGEA) from 2014 to 2019. It was appreciated by all participants, especially the WGEI Secretariat, as they were able to get some lessons learned related to secretarial matters of the working group, including the publication of working group products and the use of social media to inform activities of the working group and promote its products.
The meeting also invited a speaker from the Natural Resource Governance Institute, Andrew Bauer, who discussed the risks faced by the extractive industry sector during the COVID-19, and a representative from AFROSAI-E, Edmond Shoko, who presented the results of the research entitled the SAI Resilience in Addressing the Auditor Expectation Gap during Disaster Period: the Case of Sub-Saharan Africa SAIs during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
BPK's active participation in the WGEI can benefit and enhance knowledge related to auditing extractive industries that have been conducted by other SAIs. The WGEI is one of the forums to promote and externalize BPK’s role to the international community, especially in the sector of the extractive industry.