SAO audited the accounts and budget of the Ministry of Agriculture for 2022: the data is reliable
Press release on audit No 22/17 – 31 July 2023
The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) audited the data of the closing account, bookkeeping and financial statements of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) for the year 2022. The auditors also focused on the data submitted by the MoA for the assessment on the state budget implementation. As a result, it was found that both the financial statements and the data submitted by the MoA for the assessment on the implementation of the state budget for 2022 were reliable.
The closing account of the MoA was drawn up in accordance with the legal provisions and the information contained therein is consistent with the data in the budgetary system, financial sheets and other records.
The audit started during the 2022 financial year, so the MoA was continuously correcting the deficiencies identified by the auditors. However, the value of these deficiencies was not significant: their impact on the financial statements would have been EUR 3.9 million if the corrections had not been made. The shortcomings in the classification of budget revenue amounted to CZK 13.3 million. Similarly, the deficiencies identified in the draft closing account were not material and the MoA corrected them all.
The MoA also corrected all deficiencies which the SAO had identified during the previous audit in 2017 (audit No 17/31). The MoA not only corrected the accounting errors, but also modified its methodology. It has thus created the preconditions for avoiding a repetition of the identified errors.
Audit No 22/17 has been the fourth audit of a financial audit type performed at the MoA since the beginning of the reform of the state accounting system in 2010. It turns out that repeated SAO audits contribute to higher reliability of reported data, which positively affects the reporting ability of the data of the financial statements of the audited accounting units.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office