An Analysis Of The Performance Auditing Mode Used In The Government-invested Construction Projects

With a share exceeding 50% of the total audit resources in western developed countries and even a much higher one of above 85% in America alone, performance auditing has soon been leading a predominant role in government auditing since its existence more than half a century ago. It is held by western audit professionals that the implementation of performance auditing is an epoch-making booster in the history of government auditing, and whether a nation's government auditing is promising or not relies primarily on the adoption of effective auditing.Conducted mainly by the national auditing offices, performance auditing has taken its step in both preliminary thinking and experimental exploration since the establishment of Chinese socialistic auditing system in 1983. Recently, the process of performance auditing has been pushed even further by National Audit Office. It was pointed out in The 2008-2012 Auditing Development Planning of National Audit Office that, through the improvement of the economic efficiency and effectiveness of the allotment, application and utilization of financial funds and public resources, and the transformation in economic development mode, performance auditing should be advanced on a full scale. Meanwhile, the standard of performance management should also be raised and accountability system in government bodies should be established and improved. Performance auditing should be started in all the yearly audit projects by 2012." It is really a huge task and challenge facing all auditors to achieve the predetermined goals.Because of the diversity in economic development in different areas, and the huge differences in audit projects themselves, it is hard to work out a uniform operating method and system of assessment with regard to all the programs. Therefore, the writer, as a grass-roots auditor, stands for a progressive, field-focused and objective-oriented implementation of performance auditing. The auditing department, as the patron saint of finances, should pioneer itself in the field of auditing government-invested projects by finding the breakthrough with the improvement of auditing quality through the exploration of new techniques and methods, thus offering the theoretical guidance and practical experience to the rapid spread of performance auditing in the national basic auditing institutions and other fields where the national economic development is involved. The present thesis, through an analysis of the present performance auditing mode used in the national government-invested construction projects, assumes that follow-up auditing is the preference pattern. It is of great theoretical and practical significance by bringing into full play the functions of auditing in the way of early warning, exposure and defense. However, being carried out not for a very long time by the national auditing offices, along with the lack of a systematic and complete theoretical support, follow-up auditing in government-invested projects are still faced with many practical problems which need to be continuously explored and studied for an ideal solution.