ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has decided that all regulatory authorities and other government bodies are subject to audit carried out by the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP), and directed them to allow access to auditors to their accounts.

After the approval from the PAC, the AGP has mandate to complete audit of the regulators.

The audit officials will not only audit the expenditures of the regulatory authorities but also their performance and other matters.

The regulatory authorities refused to give access to the AGP to their accounts on the pretext that no allocation in the budget is made for them.

They are meeting their expenditure by their own.

The PAC Chairman, Rana Tanveer Hussain, said that the committee would also take the decision of subject to audit by regulator to the parliament and endorse their decision.

In October 2019, the Law Ministry accepted the request of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra), which contended that the AGP does not have the authority to carry out the audit of the regulatory functions (of any regulator) because the country's Constitution, the AG Ordinance 2001, and the Ogra Ordinance, 2002, limit the scope of the AGP powers to the extent of conduct of audit of the accounts of the Ogra (and other regulatory bodies).

The committee also noted that departmental accounts committees (DACs) meetings in the federal ministries and departments were not being held, and urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to take notice of the matter.

This is one of the reasons that the rate of recovery was low in the last two years.

Expressing his views, the chairman said that regular DACs by principal accounting officers (PAOs) should be part of their annual ACR.

Former speaker National Assembly and member committee Ayaz Sadiq said that those PAOs who failed to convene the DACs regularly, their salaries and other perks and privileges should be suspended through the Accountant General of Pakistan.

The committee in consensus agreed to give chance to the PAOs to resolve a mechanism to ensure monthly DAC.

The committee was informed that Rs67 billion recovery was made during the last two years of Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government including Rs4.6 billion recovered during the last six months.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020