Account Chamber of the Russian Federation

WELCOME SPEECH

S.V.Stepashin, Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation

Chairman of the INTOSAI Working Group on Key National Indicators

Distinguished Mr. LIU Jiayi, Auditor General of the Chinese People's Republic!

Distinguished colleagues!

Let me greet you at the Second meeting of the INTOSAI Working group on Key National Indicators.

I would like to mention with satisfaction that since the first meeting of the Key National Indicators Working Group in Moscow on the 20-21 of May 2008, the Group has made great work to comply with the mandate which was delegated to us by the INTOSAI Congress. Basing on the Terms of Reference and Action Plan for the years 2008-2010 adopted in Moscow, the Group has reached considerable success.

First and foremost, I'd like to point out, that Memorandum on Cooperation between INTOSAI and OECD in the field of measuring social progress has been worked out, approved of by the Governing Board of INTOSAI and signed with the active participation of SAI of Mexico as the Chair of INTOSAI Governing Board, SAI of Austria as INTOSAI Secretary General and SAI of the Russian Federation. As you know, the text of the Memorandum is placed on the website of our group.

The report on the activities was submitted to and approved of by the INTOSAI Governing Board in Vienna in November 2008 and by the INTOSAI Committee on Goal 3 of the Strategic Plan which took place in India, March 5-6, 2009. The report is also available on the WG website. I'd like to thank the members of the Group for the active and productive work to fulfill the designed plans. In the context of the tasks of the WG KNI I must focus on the results of the summit of «G 20». First of all remarkable is the fact that, despite the complicated situation in the world and in the countries, leaders of states demonstrated the ability to come to the consensus. Besides, they outlined a new system designed to withstand global crises. Participants of the meeting commited themselves to restore trust, economic growth and working places, to restore financial system, strengthen financial regulation, to reform international financial institutes, to promote international trade and investments, facilitate sustainable development. The programme is large-scale, demanding not only the ability of the leaders and states to negotiate, but also the concrete mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability of the international financial and economic processes. This is impossible without commonly acknowledged indicators, criteria, system of evaluation and methods of control.

Can INTOSAI as international organization stay aside from these global processes? Can SAIs representing interests of tax-payers watch the ongoing processes in a passive manner? I don't think they can. I consider that today's work will be though a minor but a vivid contribution to the decision of our common problems for the sake our own interests.

At today's session we are planning to discuss in detail both what we have done and what we are going to do in future.

We shall listen to the presentations of the SAIs of Indonesia that expressed its wish to join our Group and SAI of Kyrgyzia that has joined our group as an observer.

Then I'm going to submit my detailed report on the activities of the Working Group since May 2008 to April 2009.

In the Agenda there are reports of members of the Working Group on some projects included in the working plan:

Mrs. Bernice STEINHARDT (USA),

Dr. Gusztav Bager (Hungary),

Ms. Liene RUGAJA (Latvia),

Mr. Alexander PISKUNOV (Russia),

Mr. Altay ZEINELGABDIN (Kazakhstan),

Mr. Valentyn SYMONENKO (Ukraine).

We also suggest that Working plan for 2009-2010 should be discussed.