Irregularity — the ‘normal’ normal

The Auditor General of Pakistan has been having a busy time of late and his latest foray into the undergrowth of the national finances reveals that his office has ‘objections’ regarding mismanagement, irregularities and weak financial controls in respect of a mere Rs3.12 trillion of public money spread across no less than 36 federal ministries during the audit year 2016-17. This is a stupefyingly large sum of money, and considering there are 60 federal ministries it indicates that all is not well financially in more than half of them. The discrepancies were revealed in an exercise that was less than a full audit but a ‘test-check’; what a full audit might reveal beggars the imagination.

Irregularity on this scale is not a mere accountancy error; this is the wilful misuse of public funds by the agencies tasked with their fair and equitable distribution. Individuals and groups within those agencies will have had to conspire together in order to manipulate systems and recording procedures. This points to a long-established culture of corruption.

It is the various heads of government units that spend public money who are responsible for reconciling expenditure. The AGP report confirms that large amounts of expenditure remain unreconciled, and the ministry of finance had allowed Rs1 trillion in supplementary grants to ministries and their divisions in FY 2015-16. This goes far beyond the unacceptable. Parliament was kept in the dark about much of this as only Rs261b were declared to it in the federal budget of 2016-17. This makes a complete nonsense of any pretence of accountability or transparency, and presents institutionalised ‘irregularity’. As if this were not enough the AGP has also revealed just how much ministries do not spend of their allocation — yet did not return to the finance ministry. This disgraceful shambles needs some ruthless revision and we thank the AGP for his diligence.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.