It was learned from the National Audit Office that China's internal audit work has made remarkable achievements in recent years. From 2000 to 2004, internal audit institutions throughout the country conducted more than 1.98 million audit projects, finding out 42.09 billion yuan (US$5.2 billion) losses and waste. Owing to these audit efforts, income increase and expenditure saving reached 65.29 billion yuan. Internal audit institutions posed 1.029 million suggestions that were accepted and discovered 9,841 pieces of clues for key and big cases. At present, China has over 200,000 staffs engaged in internal audit.

China Institute of Internal Audit Secretary General Yi Renping said that internal audit helped enterprises and institutions save 25.79 billion yuan expenditure in 2004, 12.73 billion yuan higher than the average amount during 2000 to 2004. Internal audit plays a more and more important role in guaranteeing asset security and integrity and healthy economic operation of government departments, enterprises and institutions.

In recent two years, China Institute of Internal Audit promulgated basic guidelines for internal audit, codes of practice for internal audit practitioners, twenty specific rules and two directories for internal audit practice, marking that China has preliminarily established the basic framework of internal audit standards system.

Yi Renping said that the next five years will be a crucial period for internal audit to transit from financial audit to management audit and performance audit. China will strive to basically build an internal audit standards system that meets the organizational rectification requirements and is harmonious with international internal audit standards and other audit standards. This system should have reasonable structure and perfect layers.

(China News Service December 2, 2005)