Mission Context

Summary of the mission

The Court of Auditors (TC) was established by Decree-Law No. 7/92 of January 27, 1992, relating to the Organic Law of the Court of Auditors. Among its main competencies are:

1. To conduct prior control of the legality and budget coverage of acts and contracts involving State expenditure, including all its services, autonomous departments, local authorities, and public companies;
2. To audit the above-mentioned entities and evaluate their accounts, when applicable;
3. To issue an opinion on the General State Account (CGE);
4. To control the use of financial resources obtained abroad, notably through loans or grants.

 As the supreme audit institution of Guinea-Bissau, it is responsible for controlling the legality and regularity of public revenues and expenditures, sound financial management, accounting procedures, and verifying the proper use of credits, funds, and assets managed by public services. Therefore, it plays an essential role in financial and budgetary control.

Moreover, according to paragraph (c) of Article 12 of Decree-Law No. 7/92, dated November 27, it is also tasked with reviewing and issuing an opinion on the General State Account (CGE). This opinion is part of supporting the National People's Assembly (ANP), which, as the State’s budgetary authority, is responsible for controlling the execution of the General State Budget.

Historically, the Court of Auditors of Guinea-Bissau has issued only five opinions on the CGE: two in 2015 (covering the years 2009 and 2010) and three in 2021 (covering 2014, 2015, and 2016), which were approved in a plenary session of the ANP on February 22, 2022.

Given the Court’s limited practical experience in preparing these documents, which require high technical and organizational complexity, it is imperative to have support from consultants with solid technical expertise, particularly in successive auditing and in issuing opinions on the General State Account.

Currently, the Court is preparing the third batch of opinions to recover accumulated delays and regularize the issuance of opinions on the General State Accounts. The Directorate General of Treasury and Public Accounting has already submitted the accounts for the fiscal years 2017 to 2022 to the Court.

Accordingly, the technical assistance should take a differentiated approach through a formative and guiding methodology, focused on the practical capacity building of the Court’s task force team. The aim is to empower its technicians, granting them autonomy in analysis, preparation of reports, and drafting chapters of the opinions. Thus, the technicians will acquire and develop technical skills that will enable them to independently and continuously perform these tasks in the future.

Within the scope of activities supported by the Economic Governance, Transparency, and Accountability Project (GETR) for the Court of Auditors, Expertise France is recruiting an international expert to contribute to the preparation of an opinion on the General State Accounts for the years 2017 to 2022.

The mission will include:

·       Technical support for the analysis of the CGEs and the preparation of the corresponding opinions;

·       Provide initial training to the members of the opinion task force on methodologies for analyzing the General State Account, revenue and expenditure classifiers, and macroeconomics, in collaboration with the CI; including chapters, integration of MVCIL reports, review of each opinion chapter, and their consolidation.

·       Monitor the work through critical review of the draft report chapters presented by the chapter coordinators, to identify potential errors/inconsistencies, lack of context/harmonization, incomplete information, etc.

·       Propose necessary modifications to the chapter coordinators, incorporating the changes agreed upon with the respective coordinators.

·       Provide ongoing technical support and guidance to the teams involved in the opinion drafting process.

Overview of the project "Transparent and accountable economic governance”

The general objective of the Economic Governance, Transparency and Accountability Project (GETR), funded by the Delegation of the European Union in Guinea-Bissau and implemented by Expertise France, is to "promote transparency and accountability in public finances of Guinea-Bissau" over a period of 4 years.

The action aims to "encourage strategic administrative reforms to consolidate the foundations of sound public financial management, strengthening budgetary discipline, ensuring that financial resources are allocated efficiently and in accordance with political priorities, and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of public service delivery.

The action also seeks to strengthen financial control bodies and procedures, notably by encouraging civil society participation, in order to intensify the fight against corruption."

In line with the overall objective of this action, the project has two specific objectives:

Table 1. Specific Objectives

 The results are as follows:

Table 2. Expected Results

The main beneficiary administrations are

Table 3. Beneficiary Administrations

The project is being implemented by a team composed of:

1.                   A coordinator, specialist in general and asset accounting;

2.                   A deputy coordinator;

3.                   Two resident experts in budget management and programming, and financial control;

4.                   An administrative and financial manager;

5.                   Short-term experts from the public and private sectors.