Daily Times

According to the Auditor General Pakistan’s (AGP) report on the accounts of the Punjab government for the 2015-16 fiscal year, Punjab’s Chief Minister and Finance minister have a lot of explaining to do. According to the AGP report, irregularities worth Rs 287 billion occurred due to inefficient budgetary and financial management. Out of this, a whopping Rs 27 billion were excess payments made for the Lahore Orange Line Metro project and Rs 63. 71 billion were disproportionately retained for development funds. Planned receipts were short by a total of Rs 35.29 billion. The Punjab government also failed to recover Rs 5.47 billion in electricity charges from autonomous organisations. So far, senior officials have failed to comment on these shocking revelations.

Sadly, the quantum of irregularities in provincial budget management has increased from the previous fiscal year. Last year, the AGP had pointed out discrepancies worth Rs 36.94 billion in the accounts of the Punjab Government.

With the General Elections drawing closer, there is little doubt that the AGP’s revelations will be politicised and used against the PML-N by their political opponents, specifically when it comes to excess payments for the Orange Line Metro, which is a controversial project to begin with.

These figures also indicate that the Punjab government’s Strategic Reforms Unit (SRU) has not had the desired impact on the wide-ranging reform it was tasked with. The organisation spent a total of Rs9 million in its attempts to reduce corruption in administrative departments from 2014 to 2017.

In Pakistan, there is an inordinate focus on cases of grand corruption of the political class. The reality is that government departments and the permanent bureaucracy that mans them continue to carry on malpractices leading to leakages and malfeasance. No anticorruption strategy can work if these issues are not addressed with a sound long-term plan. It is hoped that the Punjab CM who claims to be the guru of good governance will act on the findings of this report and undertake a clean-up of administration so that our scarce public funds are protected from theft and irregularities.  *

Published in Daily Times, February 5^th 2018.