2026-01-15
Today, representatives of the National Audit Office are participating in the annual seminar-meeting "Key developments in the work of the finance and budget departments of Lithuanian Municipalities” organized by the Training and Consulting Centre of the Association of Local Authorities in Lithuania and intended for managers and staff of municipal finance and budget departments. The seminar discusses how municipalities have complied with fiscal discipline rules and what common accounting errors municipal finance officers should pay attention to in order to ensure that their financial statements and data in national set of annual accounts are accurate.
This year, special attention is paid to topics related to the functions of the National Audit Office as an independent fiscal institution. Milda Pieškutė, Principal Economist, and Karlota Bochanaitė, Economist, of the Budget Monitoring Department presented a report entitled "Fiscal Discipline Rules for Municipal Budgets: Retrospective and Prospects," which discussed:
- New features of the Constitution Law on the Implementation of the Fiscal Treaty;
- Changes to the methodology for assessing fiscal discipline rules;
- How municipalities have managed to comply with the rules so far.
The financial statements of municipalities are consolidated into a national set of annual accounts, which is audited by the National Audit Office. At the seminar, Vita Andrulytė, Principal Public Auditor and Team Leader of the Financial Audit Department 1 of the National Audit Office, presented the results of the financial audits of the 2024 sets of accounts underlining:
- The role of public auditors in the municipal accountability system;
- The most common accounting errors and their causes;
- Deficiencies in the accounting process that affect the auditor's opinion.
The annual seminars-meetings organised by the Training and Consulting Centre of the Association of Local Authorities in Lithuania have been held for more than 15 years. This is an excellent opportunity for municipal representatives to exchange experiences in improving the activities of their departments and more efficiently implementing the requirements of amended or updated legislation regulating municipal finance regulation and accounting.