Pakistan's new auditor general stares out of the controversial £ 376 trillion 'typing errors'

The recent controversy surrounding the audit report of Pakistan, which inflated irregularities, has caused the call to reform. New auditor general Maqbol Ahmed Gondal must address credibility issues, while the audit approach is moved to focus on sincere financial supervision and value for money. Maqbol Ahmed Gondal, who was sworn in on Monday’s (X) newly appointed auditor general, Maqbol Ahmed Gondal, as Pakistan’s 22nd auditor general, took the lead in a time when the country’s top audit body was under intense investigation for a report that was dramatically revealed. Maqbol Ahmed Gondal, who swore as Pakistan’s 22nd auditor general at the Supreme Court on Monday, will serve a four-year term. His immediate challenge is to deal with the outage of the Auditor-General of Pakistan (AGP) earlier “Consolidated Federal Government Audit Report for 2024-25”, which originally claimed irregularities of £ 376 trillion-a figure more than three times Pakistan’s GDP. From “trillions” to “billions” The report, released in August, alleged purchasing irregularities worth £ 284 trillion, poor civilian works of £ 85.6 trillion, and unresolved circular of £ 1.2 trillion. The astronomical numbers caused disbelief in government circles and widespread criticism in the media. After weeks of defending the report, the Auditor -General’s Office quietly admitted to having “typing errors”, and he made it clear that the word trillion was wrongly used instead of billion in some places. The revised figure of £ 9,769 trillion – still a massive amount – was loaded onto the AGP’s website last week. This amounts to nearly two-thirds of Pakistan’s federal budget for FY 2023-24. Why the numbers do not pick up experts believes the initial figure of £ 376 trillion was the result of a bloating aggregation of audit observations, rather than verified financial losses. Economist dr. Vaqar Ahmad of the Institute of Sustainable Development Policy told Dawn that the AGP often classifies procedures as irregularities, which “simplify values ​​far beyond the actual spending.” Former auditors also point out that Pakistan’s audit practices rely on outdated methods. A single project can be marked several times under different rules, creating layers of “irregularities” without necessarily proving corruption. Call for the reform of senior officials that the problem is not in expertise, but in approach. Hammed Yaqoob Sheikh, secretary of the housing and works division and a former Finance Secretary, said Pakistan’s audit system should shift from simply identifying decay to evaluate whether the government’s spending “value for money”, as in developed countries. The credibility challenge that the controversy left the auditor -general’s office faced a credibility crisis. Critics believe the episode reflects deeper defects in Pakistan’s liability framework, where figures on the head of the head overshadow the right financial supervision.