ISLAMABAD: Audit officials claimed before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday that they had pointed out anomalies of over Rs6 billion in the accounts of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

However, during its scrutiny of the audit objections from the year 2010-2011, the PAC observed that the figures audit officials had laid before the committee were completely different from those the FBR had submitted. According to the board’s statistics, the amount was far less than the audit report claimed.

Subsequently, PAC Chairman Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah directed Auditor General of Pakistan Rana Asad Amin to hold an inquiry into the matter.

“If this was a mistake by your department, then you should fix it and if the FBR is at fault then do let us know,” Mr Shah told him. “It is unfair that parliamentarians come from all across the country to attend this meeting, but they are unable to do anything because the figures provided to us are incorrect.”

The PAC also sought from the FBR details of the confiscated vehicles it had auctioned, as well as the complete inventory of the vehicles given to FBR officials, as well as other government departments.

During the meeting, FBR Chairman Tariq Bajwa told the PAC that over 50,000 vehicles were cleared under the ‘Vehicle Amnesty Scheme’ in 2012. He added that there were other goods being smuggled into and out of the country and insisted that the FBR was trying to crack down on all kinds of smuggling.

When asked by PTI’s Shafqat Mehmood about his department’s performance, the FBR chief said that under the performance evaluation system, the department had fired many officers, including a grade 21 official, and that each officer’s performance was being evaluated.

During the meeting, the DG Audit Irfan Wattoo informed the committee that the auditors from his department were not getting complete access to financial records and asked the PAC to ensure about full access to all of FBR’s financial records.

At this, AGP Rana Asad Amin told the committee that his office had evolved a six-point mechanism to obtain access to the entire record.

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2015

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