The government is assisting with the review of the Audit Act 1969 to strengthen the Office of the Auditor-General for which $7 million is provided to fast-track the audit backlog which has been an issue over the year.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad says the Auditor-General is provided a new allocation of $722,000 for outsourcing its audits.
Professor Prasad says an independent and well-resourced judiciary is critical for a well-functioning democracy and as such $50 million is provided for the funding of our judiciary in the 2023-2024 Budget.
He says the Fijian Parliament is allocated a sum of $16.3 million, an increase of $7.7 million.
Professor Prasad says this includes $4.4 million for the purchase of equipment and upgrade of the broadcast system which will include multi-language captioning to enable our Parliament to be more inclusive and increase citizen engagement in our 3 key languages.
The Finance Minister further says a total of $35.5 million is allocated to the Independent Commissions for strengthening and tightening the processes and reporting mechanisms for the independent bodies, commissions and statutory authorities.
He says over the years, there has been a serious lack of timely submission of annual reports, detailed expenditure breakdowns and utilization reports by many of these institutions, this is not the standard of proper accountability that we expect of independent bodies and hopes that with appropriate allocation of budget, this will improve.
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