NEW DELHI: Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Girish Chandra Murmu, has been appointed chairman of the Panel of External Auditors of the United Nations for the second time in a row for 2021.
Currently, the panel consists of countries including India, Germany, Chile, China, the United Kingdom, France, Philippines, Switzerland, Italy, Ghana, Indonesia, Canada and Russia.
As the chairman, India’s CAG plays a key role in achieving the panel’s objective of greater degree of collaboration and coordination among members and exchange of information on audit methods and findings.
The 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 decisions made by the UN and its agencies like WHO, FAO, WFP, WIPO etc.
Like any other organisation, the accounts and management operations of the UN and its specialised agencies 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 individual external auditors of the United Nations system, who are also heads of supreme audit institutions of their countries.
India’s CAG had earlier been on the UN Board of Auditors from 1993 to 1999 and from 2014 to 2020. Currently, he is the external auditor of the World Health Organization (2020-2023), Food & Agriculture Organization (2020-2025) and Inter Parliamentary Union (2020-2022).
In recent past, he has been the external auditor of the World Food Programme, World Intellectual Property Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, UN World Tourism Organization, International Organization for Migration, International Maritime Organization and Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons etc.