The Parliament passes the budget for the Auditor Generals office at MVR45 million, as decided by the Finance Committee.
This budget was passed with votes from 45 of the 53 members attending today's parliament meeting. While six members voted against this, only one member remained undecided.
The Finance Committee of the Parliament discussed the budget yesterday with senior officials of the Auditor Generals office and the Finance Minister. The members of the committee voted the budget for the Auditor Generals office at 45 million. The Auditor Generals office proposed a budget of MVR60 million for next year.
The Finance Minister said yesterday that only MVR42 million can be given as the budget for the Audit Office. The Committee report by the Finance Committee says that there will be a contingency budget of an amount not exceeding MVR2 million for the Audit Office after discussion with the Committee.
Speaking about this issue today at the Parliament, Member of the Kulhudhuffushi constituency Abdul Ghafoor Moosa said that the Parliament will try to see that the Audit Office gets the budget it needs. He said that the workload of the Audit Office will increase year by year along with the governments budget.
"The past six years passed with the budget not increasing to an amount desired by the Audit Office. This will have an effect on their work. The budget of the Audit Office needs to be bigger than other government organizations. That is the way to investigate the fraud and corruption going on within the country," Abdul Ghafoor said.
The Auditor General said at yesterdays Financial Committee that they require an increase in the budget to increase the amount of employees, to audit island councils, and to establish Audit Offices in the northern and southern areas of Maldives.
