Lithuania’s National Audit Office tell public institutions to learn from mistakes

“In order to increase the impact of audit on the management and control system of public finances, we have summarised the most common errors occurring in the management of public assets and budget execution and recommended how to avoid them. Such summary of mistakes is a great help to institutions to learn from the mistakes of others and not repeat their own ones,” said Auditor General Giedrė Švedienė, the Office reports in a press release.

The auditors noted that not all state institutions and agencies have learned to manage accounts under the new accounting standards introduced in 2010. The summary audit results demonstrate that state institutions often made mistakes in the accounting of land, immovable and movable cultural property, investment, calculation of depreciation of assets, and drawing up of financial statements.

In addition, the auditors pointed out to the audited entities that institutions often first use state budget appropriations for programme financing rather than the revenue of budgetary institutions. Another common practice is to use appropriations which have not been used for advance payment for works, goods and services at the end of the reporting period instead of returning the appropriations to the budget.

Most of the difficulties encountered by the public sector in the area of the management and use of public assets were related to public procurement, the future of assets that are no longer used, investment planning and use, and the lease of residential premises and other property.