Lithuania’s state finances lack reliability, audit finds

Lithuania’s State Audit Office (Valstybės kontrolė) has concluded that the government’s financial data is unreliable, preventing an accurate assessment of public funds and debt levels, LRT reports.

The audit, published Friday, found that a €1.28 billion reduction in the government’s reported debt for 2025 lacked sufficient justification. Auditors could not confirm whether the adjustment—stemming from the elimination of inter-agency borrowing—was valid, leaving doubts over the true scale of public debt, which officially stood at €33.3 billion (39.5% of GDP) at year’s end, up €3.3 billion from 2024.

Discrepancies extended to public asset records. Auditors were unable to verify €19 billion (21% of the total €91 billion) in reported state and municipal assets, including land, forests, mineral resources, cultural heritage sites, and infrastructure. The largest inconsistency—€15.8 billion—involved land valuations, where municipal records conflicted with data from the national Centre of Registers.

State Auditor General Irena Segalovičienė warned that systemic failures—slow processes, delayed digitisation, and a shortage of basic accounting skills—had eroded trust in a fifth of the state’s asset data. “This negligence creates risks of misuse, asset loss, or poor decision-making,” she stated.

The audit also criticised Lithuania’s dual accounting system, which forces institutions to maintain separate financial and budget execution reports under current laws. The State Audit Office urged the Finance Ministry to adopt a unified, accrual-based system to reduce bureaucracy and improve transparency. “We’re doing double the work for results we can’t trust,” said Danguolė Krištopavičienė, head of the office’s Financial Audit Department.

Finance Ministry officials have yet to respond to the findings.