NA speaker returns controversial Rs375tr audit report to AGP

ISLAMABAD: The already controversial annual audit report for fiscal year 2023-24, citing an unprecedented Rs375,000 billion in financial irregularities, has triggered a fresh dispute as the National Assembly (NA) has returned the documents to the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) without laying them before parliament.

Informed sources told The News that National Assembly Speaker expressed his displeasure over how the audit reports were sent to NA Secretariat to place before the House without being routed through the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, a practice that has long been considered mandatory. Copies of the reports were subsequently returned to the AGP office.

The AGP, however, reportedly wrote back to the NA Secretariat, reminding it that under the Constitution it is the Assembly’s obligation to lay the reports before parliament. However, it made the reports public without their laying before the legislature.

The AGP reports are already faced with serious controversy because of the staggering irregularities figure of Rs375,000 billion -- an amount 27 times larger than the entire federal budget for 2023-24 (Rs14.5 trillion) and nearly three-and-a-half times Pakistan’s total GDP of around Rs110 trillion.

Serious questions have already been raised about the credibility of the audit document. Former auditor general Javed Jehangir, speaking to The News, described the figure as “abnormal” and called for a review. “This staggering amount warrants careful re-examination,” Jehangir said, adding that during his tenure, audit reports were never made public before being presented in parliament. He questioned why the report for audit year 2024-25 (covering FY2023-24) was uploaded on the AGP’s website before being tabled in the National Assembly.

The audit report, as highlighted in The News earlier, cited anomalies including Rs284.17 trillion in procurement, Rs85.6 trillion in delayed or defective civil works, Rs2.5 trillion in pending receivables, and Rs1.2 trillion in circular debt. The sheer scale of these figures has baffled financial experts, who suspect either a massive compilation error or a deeper credibility crisis within the country’s financial oversight system.

With the NA now refusing to table the report in its current form, and the AGP insisting on its constitutional right to have it laid before parliament, the fate of the audit year 2024-25 report remains highly uncertain.

Experts warn that unless the figures are clarified and credibility restored, Pakistan’s financial accountability process faces a severe trust deficit.

There is also an issue as to why the AGP has made the reports public without waiting for their presentation to parliament.

The AGP spokesman, when asked about the return of reports, said that the AGP followed the laid down process -- it wrote a letter to the M/o Parliamentary Affairs along with its endorsements to the NA and Senate Secretariats. As per procedure, the spokesman added, the requisite number of copies of the audit reports were forwarded to the relevant authorities and properly received over there.

When asked why for first time the latest report includes in its executive summary the un-believable figures, he explained, “As far as the issue of amount of irregularities contained in the combined audit report is concerned, it is highlighted that a combined report containing findings of all audit reports of the federal government and its organisations was prepared last year as well and placed on the website of AGP. The basic purpose of doing so was to make it easier for search purposes to all who may not be as acquainted with the working of auditing function and its distribution among different Field Audit Offices (FAOs) spread across Pakistan. The only difference this year is the inclusion of the amount of irregularities along with the title of different nature of audit findings.”

The spokesman though admitted that the reports are made public without laying them before parliament, he did not respond to this issue in his written reply to The News.