Audit or ritual?

THE AGP’s latest audit report of federal civil accounts is a detailed record of governance failures and institutional collapse. The numbers are staggering, but the deeper failure is cultural. Trillions sit in unrecovered loans. Billions were lost because regulators forgot to charge late fees. If not deliberate, these are embarrassingly elementary failures. No ministry is being outwitted by complex fraud. Monthly reports go unfiled. Collected taxes never reach the treasury. Bank accounts remain open past legal deadlines. Routine tasks are left undone. Sadly, the ministries and other government entities do not respond to the audit paras. The Economic Affairs Division ignored audit observations on Rs1.9tr in liabilities. The Cabinet Division repeatedly refused to answer for Rs75bn in parliamentarians’ schemes. This shows that non-response has been normalised. Departments have learned that ignoring oversight carries no real consequence. That calculation, repeated across institutions, is the deeper crisis.

The FBR’s Rs117.8bn in under-realised super tax represents the tax authority failing at its only fundamental purpose. Unrecovered duties compound the same pattern within the same institution. Energy sector findings are equally troubling. Distribution companies ran without internal audits for two full years. Dasu Hydropower’s costs overran by 257pc. Neelum-Jhelum has sat dormant since May 2024, with inquiries still incomplete. These are not project management lapses in any ordinary sense. They represent billions committed, then lost, with accountability treated as optional. The NDMA holds nearly Rs11bn in relief stock with zero inventory system. All 20 findings from the audit went unaddressed. A disaster management body cannot account for its own emergency reserves. Passco recorded Rs21.34bn in losses across four years. Another Rs257bn in wheat receivables remain unrecovered. It renders the agency technically insolvent. Everyone knows the solution. Nobody applies it. The Public Accounts Committee will now convene. Explanations will be offered. The next audit report will confirm that this year’s recommendations were ignored. The audit cycle has become pure ritual. Bureaucrats have figured out that non-compliance carries no meaningful cost. The report ultimately reveals a bureaucracy where rules are optional, oversight is ceremonial and accountability never formally concludes. This is a system that has learned to absorb scrutiny without being changed by it. The question is whether anyone in power intends to look into it.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2026

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