Bangladesh Mahila Parishad - Norad

446 Review of Project FinancialManagementWe have reviewed the project “Promotion and Protection of Women’s HumanRights in Bangladesh” for the period June 2010 to September 2012. This part of thereport focuses primarily on the financial management aspects of the project withparticular emphasis on internal control policies and procedures, appropriateness offund utilization including project procurement, transparent utilization of fund, costeffectiveness and implementation of past audit and review recommendations.In the process of this review, we have not audited financial statements of the projectand therefore do not express an opinion on them, which are representations of themanagement. Primarily reliance in preparation of this section of the report has beenmade on the documents reviewed, interviews of key personnel involved in financialmanagement, visit of a branch office, discussion with stakeholders and analyticalprocedures applied to financial data.Comments included in this report are not criticisms but are meant to be constructiveobservations. Correspondingly, recommendations are not requirements andmanagement should evaluate each recommendation for its applicability to theorganization and its goals. The mission recognizes that some of therecommendations may have already been initiated during the course of thisengagement.6.1 Internal Control Policies and ProceduresBasic elements of an organization’s internal control comprises of its controlenvironment, accounting system and control procedures. Our discussion on BMP’sinternal control structure in light of these areas is as follows:6.1.1 Control environmentIt has been observed from examination of different documents, records andinterviews of staff members at different levels that overall attitude, awareness andenforcement of control by the management is in favor of strong controlenvironment for the organization. It patronizes transparency at every level and in