External Audit and its Role in Contributing to Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in Public Sector Financial Institutions (Applied Research)

Abstract

 The importance of sustainable development stems from its importance in preserving resources of various types and nature and preserving the rights of future generations without harming the rights of current generations. The current research aims to define the concept, goals and importance of sustainable development and its causes and the role of the auditor in measuring the extent to which these goals are achieved by relying on a set of tools represented by international auditing standards in the public sector, especially in the planning stage of the audit process, which allows the external auditor to express his professional judgment through the results he reached on the extent to which goal (16) and its goals are achieved in building strong and effective institutions subject to accountability, by creating indicators to measure the aforementioned sustainable development goal. As for the research sample, it was represented by the Industrial Bank as one of the public financial institutions operating in Iraq, and the time limits of the research were represented by the years (2021-2023). The research concluded that external auditing is an effective means that contributes to verifying the extent to which public sector financial institutions are able to achieve sustainable development goals, due to the independence of external auditing, which ensures to a reasonable extent measuring the contribution of public sector financial institutions to achieving sustainable development goals. Understanding the nature of the activity of public sector financial institutions, the tasks of their departments and the laws also affect the systems under which they operate and the general strategies of the state in audit procedures lead to the development of a set of indicators to measure the extent to which sustainable development goals are achieved.