ISLAMABAD June 12: The Controller-General of Accounts’ (CGA) hasty decision to implement US$37 million World Bank-funded Project to Improve Financial Reporting and Auditing (Pifra) may jeopardize its purpose and credibility, informed sources told Dawn on Tuesday.
The Auditor-General of Pakistan (AGP) has already conveyed to the government, and the World Bank has expressed concerns about the implementation and configuration of the project, the sources revealed.
Pifra aims at improving the accounting and auditing system by revamping the century-old accounting system, originally the responsibility of the AGP, and converted to CGA in the current year.
Experts say that the prototype of the new system for the accountant-general’s offices being launched from June 15 without being configured, tested and passed at the central testing site, would be disastrous.
The new system was approved by the president in December 2000, and its implementation was assigned to CGA in July 2001.
Earlier, the implementation was fixed for July 1998 as it was first conceived and implemented in 1996, but due to the separation of accounting functions from AGP in July 2002, it was transferred to CGA.
This haste in the implementation of the system is probably due to pressure from the ministry of finance which was expecting a US$500-million loan from the World Bank. The bank had asked for a certificate saying that the automated accounting had been satisfactorily implemented.
The move is likely to benefit the CGA in securing additional funds from the World Bank for a follow up Pifra-II project, the sources said.
The IT division experts says that in view of lack of IT expertise in AGP offices and the newly-created CGA, the hasty operational acceptance testing, would be at the cost of quality of system configuration, which seems to have been designed to benefit contractors to receive around US$80,000 as first instalment.
A retired officer of the audit department, who remained attached to the project, said that it was wrong to waste a well-crafted implementation strategy in 1995, and admired by various World Bank missions.
It could be another addition to the failed IT projects in the country after Nadra, if it was coerced without its successful configuration during the development phase, he warned.