Articles 169 and 170 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973 read with Sections 8 and 12 of the Auditor-General‘s (Functions, Powers and Terms and Conditions of Service) Ordinance, 2001 require the Auditor-General of Pakistan to conduct audit of the accounts of Federal Government, Provincial Governments and the accounts of any authority or body, established by these Governments.

Auditor-General of Pakistan, being Auditor-General of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJ&K) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) also conducts audits in both these Regions under their respective legal provisions. The audit report recently made public is the consolidated Audit Report (Federal) based on audits of the accounts of 7,879 formations working under entities of the Federal Government for the financial year 2023-24, conducted by 16 Field Audit Offices, and also contains some audit observations for the previous years. The audit was conducted during 2024-25 on a test-check basis to report significant audit findings to the stakeholders.

As per the preface to the report, it includes only the systemic issues and audit findings carrying high monetary value. Relatively less significant issues are to be pursued with the respective Principal Accounting Officers (PAOs) in meetings of Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) and in cases where the PAOs do not initiate appropriate action, the audit observations will be brought to the notice of the Public Accounts Committee in the next year‘s Audit Report.

As per the Executive Summary of the Report the scope was as under:

a. Scope of Audit Department of Audit-General of Pakistan (DAGP) is mandated to conduct audits of 7,879 formations working under different PAOs/Ministries at Federal level. Audit coverage relating to expenditure for the current audit year, under compliance audit category, comprises 1,362 formations having a total expenditure of Rs 24,257.531 billion and receipts of Rs 20,693.582 billion for the financial year 2023-24

(Emphasis is ours)

As per the Budget for the year 2023-2024 the total budget outlay (expenditure) was Rs 14.46 trillion. Federal revenue for the budget was budgeted as Rs 12.163 trillion. When this amount is compared with what has been shown in the audit report then it means that expenditure and revenue include more than one financial year. This matter has not been indicated in the audit report.

Nevertheless,........

© Business Recorder