Abstract
The relevance of the study is due to the need to improve the efficiency of budget investments in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Performance audits of the use of these investments will reveal opportunities to optimize expenditures and increase the overall socio-economic impact, which is significant for the sustainable development of the country. In order to improve the efficiency and socio-economic return of budget expenditures, this study is focused on evaluating the efficiency of budget investments during the performance audit. This study is aimed at reviewing the role and capabilities of the performance audit, as a mechanism of public financial control of budget investments. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used as a method for evaluating efficiency. Taking into account the reference management, the DEA algorithm is proposed to address the issue of limited input and output data to evaluate the national socio-economic development indicators. The special study of the budget investments’ technical performance in the regions of Kazakhstan shows that this method can be used since it improves the flexibility and performance of evaluation in the performance audit. The stability of the concept of performance audit is therefore confirmed, showing the need for a periodic revision of the legislative and methodological base. The study highlighted the main challenges of performance audit of budget investments in the Republic of Kazakhstan and provided recommendations for improvement.