Only 1.4% government's spendings audited, AGP disclosed

Ishfaq A Mughal

The auditors who are core authorities for aditing the government's spedings have been able to look into only 1.4% of Pakistan’s three-trillion-rupee annual spending. 

Thus, what they unearthed is just a fraction of financial irregularities of Rs1.9 billion. 

It is thus safe to assume that the real mess is much worse. After all, auditors went through only Rs4.5 billion spent out of the annual budget of over Rs3 trillion.

These was disclosed in the 2011-12 annual report that Auditor General of Pakistan Akhtar Buland Rana had earlier presented to President Asif Ali Zardari.

Violations of rules and regulations, accounting errors, violations of the principles of propriety and probity, low recovery rates, overpayments and missing records all surfaced when the books were scrutinised, said his report.

“The ministries and divisions did not prepare and execute their budgets effectively,” the annual report stated, adding that funds were released without identifying schemes of expenditures by the recipients.

Federal ministries were the naughtiest. Of their Rs654.6 million checked, the auditors put a question mark over a higher number: Rs700 million – which is 107% of the audited accounts.

Of the Rs1.9 billion in fudged numbers, Rs1.1 billion was marked over the violation of rules and regulations and principles of propriety.

The auditors found that Rs294.6 million was lost because money was not recovered or people were overpaid.

During the scrutiny of the accounts by the Public Accounts Committee, the amount identified under any audit observation turned out to be smaller than the actual losses.

In state-owned corporations, 87% of the audited amount was placed under observation. The corporate audit wing audited Rs803 million in expenditures and out of that, Rs699.8 million were placed under observation.

The watchdog went through Rs336.4 million in defence spending, of which Rs107.6 million or roughly one-third is questionable.

These audit reports will be sent to the new Public Accounts Committee that will then decide what has to be done next. During the last five years, the committee has deposited Rs144 billion back into the national kitty.