The National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT) is developing an initiative to enhance public participation in the audit process in the country as a means of advancing transparency and accountability in the use of public resources, the Controller and Auditor General (CAG), Mr. Ludovick Utouh, informed a multi-stakeholder platform in Dar es Salaam recently.

According to the CAG, history was being made by National Audit Office as it seeks to provide opportunities for media, citizens and their organisations to make significant contributions to the audit process in Tanzania.

“As democratic countries are being faced with limited resources, the greater the need for transparency and good governance,” Mr. Utouh said as he stressed the need to develop a mechanism for enhancing citizen participation and urged stakeholders to recognize that audits are not only for Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) but citizens and media too.

Mr. Utouh said that NAOT officials would be given the capacity to appropriate and customize relevant tools and approaches designed to involve the public in the audit process as well as develop a work plan to roll out the implementation of these approaches.

The platform sought to build on an earlier roundtable convened by the World Bank and NAOT which was the culmination of a long standing engagement between the World Bank Institute and NAOT to advance public participation in the audit process.