The US said on Friday that it would put in place an audit mechanism for judicious utilisation of all the assistance to Pakistan including the energy sector, pledging to expedite early release of amount appropriated for 2009 fiscal.
Talking to a select group of media here at the US Embassy, Deputy Secretary of State for Resources Management Jacob J Lew said they are accountable to the taxpayers'' and would have effective auditing program everywhere.
He said that there would be auditor for general audit and energy review would be part of that. Replying to questions, he said that substantial progress was made on issuing visas to the auditors and an expanded team after the arrival of many auditors was working hard to process the reimbursement of Coalition Support Fund (CSF) of which several dollars have already been disbursed while the backlog is much larger.
"Our goal is to speed up the CSF disbursement" he said adding that approval rate of CSF is roughly about 60 per cent because of higher claims. He maintained that 2 billion dollar CSF claims submitted by Pakistan would be in fact slightly higher than one billion dollars.
The US deputy secretary said that his country is in process to scale up overall disbursement from 50 million dollars to 100 or 120 million dollars per months and the amount appropriated for 2009 would be disbursed in next few months with major portion to be materialised in the later part of the year. He said that US was committed with respect to Reconstruction Opportunities Zones (ROZs) and wanted early completion of the process.
Giving background of his visit, he said this was his third visit to Pakistan and he held meetings with senior Pakistani officials during the recent strategic dialogues in Washington. His present visit to Pakistan was follow up of Strategic Dialogues which reflects the US interest in working together with Pakistan in defeating extremism, developing long-term strategic partnership in strengthening democracy, fastening economic development and expanding opportunities.
He said that he had discussions with Pakistani foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh and secretaries responsible for broad based program to which US provides assistance. He said meeting with Foreign Minister was focused on having working group for co-ordination on both the sides and engagement on regular basis to work out details and make a kind of progress anticipated from the summit of strategic dialogue.
He said more US official would be visiting Pakistan next week while Pakistani Prime Minister would be meeting US President on Sunday and Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance would be visiting Washington next week for IMF meeting. He said that his country would help Pakistan in term of short term policy to address the energy problem and he had a detailed discussion in this regard with Pakistani officials during the meeting. About Kerry Lugar Bill, he said that he was hoping to move forward with emphasis on energy and some conventional areas.
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