New Delhi, Oct 14 : President Pratibha Patil will inaugurate the XXIVth Accountants General conference here today.

The inaugural function will be addressed by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Chairman, Public Accounts Committee of the Lok Sabha, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, the Chairman of the Committee on Public Undertakings, Rup Chand Pal.

The three-day conference will deliberate on auditing for good governance, desirable reforms in the Government accounts system so as to ensure transparency and facilitate accountability.

The conference will also focus on possible green field areas for audit such as public-private partnerships, environment and climate change, e-governance, social audit and audit of regulators.

The conference will focus on several areas including auditing for good governance; facilitating foresight and auditing for good governance; oversight and insight.

The conference will also examine the nature of reforms and re-engineering of audit processes, methodologies and approaches to support its intended role.

Issues such as partnership with other oversight agencies such as CVC and CBI including the media and the civil society will also be part of discussions.

The conference will discuss the desirable reforms in the government accounting systems so as to ensure that these provide a greater degree of transparency and facilitate accountability in terms of basic principles of accounts such as accrual accounting and the form of presentation of the accounts data.

The conference will discuss issues relating to capacity building in the Audit Department in view of the challenges facing it in terms of new systems of programme delivery and decentralized governance and other innovative approaches in government functioning.

Theme papers will be prepared for discussions to assist the participants to focus on these issues and for identifying priorities. (ANI)