GUWAHATI:
The First Senior Officials Meeting of the SAI20 Engagement Group under India’s G20 Presidency concluded in Guwahati on March 14.
The senior official meeting focused on the deliberations on the zero draft of the SAI20 communique. The delegates from the SAI20 member SAIs while broadly agreeing to the zero draft of the communique provided their valuable thoughts and suggestions to bring out an inclusive, decisive, and action-oriented communique in the SAI20 summit scheduled in June 2023.
The delegates from the G20 member SAIs, delegates from Guest Countries SAIs and invited international organizations were also invited to make general statements at the SAI20 Senior Official meetings. The delegations in their general statements agreed on the strong relevance of the priority areas while appreciating the presentations. The delegates also appreciated the productivity of the deliberations of the last two days.
Delivering the concluding remarks Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India and the chair of SAI20 Engagement Group, Girish Chandra Murmu, appreciated the wealth of knowledge gained during the deliberations on the priority areas of Blue Economy and Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Murmu stressed the need for collaboration in developing and strengthening accountability frameworks in the two priority areas.
Murmu highlighted that though each nation has its unique challenges in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, a good widely replicable knowledge system drawing upon collective wisdom is achievable.
The experiences and inputs of the delegates provided a concrete pathway towards tangible outcomes in the form of auditing guidelines and toolkits for effective audits, as well as the SAI20 communique, he added.
In his address, Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General Parveen Mehta thanked all the International and National delegates for constructive and rewarding discussions as also for active involvement in all the programs in the SAI20 Senior Official Meeting thereby making the event successful and setting the stage for the SAI20 summit in June.
After the concluding session, Murmu said that after the two-day meeting here there is a consensus that the Blue Economy and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence are emerging issues we need to address as an audit community and exchange our knowledge and share our expertise and also help each other in the capacity building.
The two-day meeting saw the participation of around 38 national and international delegates from G20 member SAIs, observer SAIs and WB, as an invited organisation.