Morocco and the United States affirmed, on Thursday in Rio De Janeiro, their desire to strengthen and institutionalize bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the field of public finance control.
During a meeting on the sidelines of the 24th International Congress of Supreme Audit Institutions (INCOSAI), which is being held from November 7 to 11, the First President of the Court of Auditors, Zineb El Adaoui, and his American counterpart Eugène Louis Dodaro, examined the priority areas of cooperation and a roadmap to institutionalize cooperation between the two organizations.
The two officials also discussed cooperation with African countries, which are bound by longstanding cooperative ties with Morocco and the United States.
Zineb El Adaoui highlighted the three main axes of the partnership to be built and deepened with the American side.
“We are planning three areas of cooperation with our American counterparts, in particular the monitoring of major strategic reforms, as well as the audit of programs which are characterized by the multiplicity of stakeholders and funding (State, local authorities, public establishments and companies, partnerships public-private…etc)”, she explained.
It is a question, continued the First President of the Court of Auditors, of “examining the means of controlling these programs with multiple stakeholders and of answering the question of knowing how to guarantee their proper implementation and enable them, thanks to our recommendations, to be more efficient, to create wealth and to better serve citizens”.
Referring to examples of Court reforms, Zineb El Adaoui affirmed that “we have created a business support center where we intend to bring together different specialties (scientists, sociologists, analysts, etc.) whose role is to support judges in conduct high-quality audit assignments and deepen their interrelationships. The United States is well advanced in this area and it will also be an interesting axis for bilateral cooperation”.
In addition, the two managers have agreed to collaborate within the framework of specific missions such as the evaluation of water management. “The idea is to initiate concrete and pragmatic cooperation. We have decided to institutionalize this cooperation within the framework of a cooperation agreement between the Court of Auditors and the US Government Accountability Office,” she said.
And to note that “we also mentioned cooperation with African countries, which have previously benefited from the support of the Kingdom, in particular for the creation of independent Courts of Auditors. We are also collaborating with African countries within the framework of INTOSAI (International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions) to strengthen their professional capacities”.
Indeed, “we propose to be an intermediary in the cooperation programs of the United States dedicated to Africa. All these axes will be formalized in an agreement which will possibly be signed during a visit by the officials of the United States control institution to the Kingdom of Morocco next year,” she concluded.