Peer Review of the Chamber of Accounts of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Background of the Peer Review

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The cooperation agreement was signed between the two SAIs on 5 January 2021 with the participation of Seyit Ahmet BAŞ, President of the Turkish Court of Accounts (TCA) and Vugar Gulmammadov, President of the Chamber of Accounts of the Republic of Azerbaijan (CoA).
Within the framework of the agreement signed via video conference, TCA would conduct a peer review in order to assess the level of compliance with the international audit standards of the audit practices in the CoA.
The peer review started on January 2021 and was planned to be completed by February 2021.

 

Objectives

The objective of the peer review is to assess the current state of audit practice within the CoA in audit methodologies and provide recommendations for full compliance with the international audit standards, if any gap is identified.

Specifically, the reviewers assessed the following areas:

  • Financial Audit – Process, Quality and Reporting
  • Compliance Audit – Process, Quality and Reporting
  • Performance Audit – Process, Quality and Reporting

The TCA took the responsibility of evaluating and reporting the results at these areas. The analysis were done on a chosen sample of audit files.

In conducting the peer review, the team took GUID 1900 (Peer Review Guide) and SAI-PMF into account.  

 

How Did the Process Progress?

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was agreed to perform the review remotely using video conferencing tools to conduct interviews.At the beginning of January, the audit files were delivered by the TCA and the review of the audit files and the policy documents of the CoA in the area of financial audit, compliance audit and performance audit went on until the end of January. In addition, several video conferences were held with CoA for discussing the questions and evaluations of the peer review team. After drafting the key findings and submission of the draft report for clearance, a delegation from the peer review team visited the CoA to inform about the works done and the final report was prepared at the end of February.

The peer review study ended up with the peer review report presenting the key findings and potential areas for improvement. Each area was evaluated separately and the findings will be reported likewise.