Ledgers and losses: Watchdog gets through only 1% of govt’s Rs3tr budget

Federal ministries show the most losses.

ISLAMABAD:

Auditors have been able to look into only 1.4% of Pakistan’s three-trillion-rupee spending. 

Thus, what they unearthed is just a fraction of financial irregularities: Rs1.9 billion. But even this was staggering as it formed 41.5% of the audited government expenditures for the fiscal year of 2011-12 – reflecting mismanagement within the public sector.

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

“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.

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.

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.

Out of that, Rs119 billion was recovered during the tenure of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan as committee chairman and the remaining Rs25 billion when Nadeem Afzal Chan became the chairman after he resigned.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2013.