Senators: Government Should Take Appropriate Measures Of Audit Chamber

The government should react to the instructions and the representations of the Audit Chamber, and also solve the problem of official and executive responsibility for disclosing budget infringements while in office. The Federation Council (upper house of parliament) representatives made such a recommendation, following the report on the chamber's work for 2000 by Sergei Stepashin, the Head of the Audit Chamber. In a document the senators also recommended that the Cabinet of Ministers examine the question of the state debt budget format and annually define federal laws for "carrying out the transparency of the budget process on the legislative level." Pointing to the increasing activity of the Audit Chamber and the efficiency of its verifications, the members of the Federation Council recommended that the Audit Chamber check the income section of the 2002 budget.