LocationsUNDP Leads Groundbreaking Oversight Alliance in the North Pacific Amid Growing Economic Pressures
May 23, 2025
Representatives from FSM, RMI, Palau, and Guam met over three days to address key challenges in public finance oversight—from debt and climate risks to strengthening public trust.
Guam – In a time of mounting economic uncertainty and increasing pressure on public budgets, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has brought together a coalition of parliamentarians and auditors from across the North Pacific to chart a bold path toward stronger fiscal accountability.
The North Pacific Fiscal Oversight for Sustainable Development Conference, held from 20–22 May in Guam, marked a historic first for the region. For three days, representatives from the parliaments and Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of Federated States of Micronesia (Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei,Kosrae), Republic of Marshall Islands, Palau and Guam met face-to-face to jointly tackle some of the most pressing challenges in public finance oversight — from rising debt burdens and climate vulnerabilities to closing trust gaps in how public resources are governed.
The event, jointly organized by UNDP Pacific Office and the IMF’s Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Centre (PFTAC), is part of the Vaka Pasifika Project - funded by the European Union - and the Strengthening Legislatures in Pacific Island Countries project, funded by Japan. These initiatives aim to reimagine public finance as a driver of sustainable development and restore trust in democratic institutions.
“This is not just a conference — it's a shift in the architecture of oversight in the Pacific,” said Tom Beloe, Head of the UNDP Sustainable Finance Hub’s Public Finance for the SDGs workstream. “We are creating spaces where auditors and MPs move from parallel efforts to shared missions — advancing transparency, equity, and climate-responsive finance in ways that speak directly to the hopes of Pacific citizens.”
At the heart of this transformation is UNDP’s convening power: as the only actor in the region capable of facilitating direct dialogue and collaboration between parliamentary public accounts committees and audit institutions, UNDP is uniquely positioned to foster the trust and institutional relationships needed for sustained impact.
The conference also featured a preview of a first-of-its-kind AI-powered audit recommendation tracking tool, currently being developed by UNDP in partnership with the SDG AI Lab. This innovative platform aims to help governments monitor and accelerate the implementation of audit findings, providing real-time data and actionable insights to strengthen accountability. The tool will be tailored to Pacific contexts and deployed with sustainability and national ownership at its core.
In her opening remarks, Munkhtuya Altangerel, UNDP Resident Representative for the Pacific, underscored the strategic role of oversight institutions in delivering on national and global goals. “Across the Pacific, governments are making bold choices – from exploring the invisible gender biases of budgets to climate and risk-informed fiscal policy – but none of this succeeds without strong and coordinated oversight. This is where accountability meets ambition.”
Participants engaged in practical, hands-on sessions on strategic debt management, expenditure tracking, and climate and gender integration in budget processes. Peer learning was prioritized, building on lessons from the South Pacific Fiscal Oversight Conference (April 2024), with focused discussions on how to translate regional insight into country-specific reform.
By the close of the event, country teams had drafted tailored national action plans — co-owned by auditors and MPs — to guide joint efforts on strengthening fiscal governance and public trust.
These were some of the comments from participants at the conference:
Mitsue Ngirailemesang (Ways and Means Financial Matters Committee Senate, Palau National Congress)
“Meetings like this help us learn about best practices and what’s working elsewhere in the region. To have everyone discussing within their country groups about the issues that they’re going through and how we can improve how we do things”
Vincent Duenas (Accountability Auditor and Acting Public Auditor, Guam Office of Accountability)
“I appreciated having a look at the Audit Recommendation Tool and I want to bring that to my office in Guam, in our office we have just issued 3 audit reports and another one coming out on recommendations follow-up so having that kind of tool to assist us would make our auditors lives easier and make us more efficient.”
“The genius of having auditors together with decision makers in legislatures and parliament, together in one room to hash out issues and come a general understanding of why audit officers face what we’re facing and them making us understand how we can make their jobs easier.
Esther Lameko-Poutoa, (Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Audit Supreme Audit Institutions)
“We are happy to work with UNDP in this space because we don’t do programming specifically for Legislature, but we can work with the audit offices and UNDP in making the legislatures understand the reports. We can build capacity of the audit officers to provide these reports that will help legislature hold government accountable”
As Pacific governments confront tough economic trade-offs, this conference signals a hopeful shift: a region rising to the challenge by building stronger, more resilient institutions that protect public resources — and the people who depend on them.
For more information please contact:
Marine Destrez, Vaka Pasifika Project Manager, UNDP Pacific Office, marine.destrez@undp.org
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