The Vitebsk Regional Institute for Education Development hosted a special panel session. The moderator was Denis Mukha, Director of the Institute of Economics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
The event was attended by representatives of the State Control Committee of the Republic of Belarus and its territorial bodies, the Accounts Chamber and control and accounting bodies of 6 subjects of the Russian Federation, representatives of the scientific and business community.
During the special session the importance of the supreme financial control (audit) bodies in dealing with the issues of innovative development of the Union State, as well as the challenges and prospects for the implementation of joint scientific and technical, innovative projects and programmes were discussed.
The participants of the session discussed the issues of efficiency of promoting public-private partnership, including the implementation of large infrastructure projects (energy, transport, roads, communications and others) through public-private financing. They also considered the role of controlling bodies in ensuring effective spending of budget funds on science and innovation, as well as the issues of control over the implementation of joint innovation projects, identification of significant and systemic risks of economic security, formation of a favourable investment climate. Priority tasks and areas of cooperation in the interests of ensuring technological sovereignty and import independence, competitiveness, accelerated development of high-tech and knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy were set.
-- Ensuring economic security is one of the main functions of both the State Control Committee of the Republic of Belarus and the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. Therefore, of course, we will be looking very closely in this direction," said Vasily Gerasimov, Chairman of the State Control Committee of Belarus, following the panel session. -- Today we discussed ways and methods that we will use in order to look not just at the expenditure of funds, but at efficiency, which is now coming to the forefront - this is the main task.
A round table on the openness of agencies in their interaction with the public and citizens was also held. Representatives of the State Control Committee of Belarus and the Accounts Chamber of Russia, as well as representatives of regional State Control Committees of Belarus and control and accountancy bodies of Russian regions discussed the legislative framework and practice of receiving information from citizens and its use in the work of the supreme audit institutions.
The round table considered the following issues:
- implementation of the principle of openness in planning and coordination of control activities;
- the role of external communications in involving citizens in state audit;
- forms and practices of interaction with citizens;
- tools of effective feedback from the society, the impact of feedback on the relevance of control activities;
- social networks as an instrument of openness of control bodies.
The practices in these areas were presented by the officials of the SCC and the Accounts Chamber of Russia, heads of the SCC of the Minsk region, control and accountancy bodies of the Bryansk region and the Komi Republic. Six agreements on cooperation between the regional state control committees of Belarus and the control and accounting bodies of Russian regions (the Komi Republic, Bryansk, Moscow, Tver and Moscow regions) were signed today. The agreements provide for the exchange of experience, the possibility of holding parallel control activities, seminars, etc.
Also, the State Control Committee of Vitebsk region and the Control and Accounts Chamber of the Republic of Bashkortostan signed a Plan of joint activities for 2024-2025 to implement the provisions of the Agreement on Cooperation and Interaction between these regional control bodies signed last year.