RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD: Public Accounts Committee (PAC) here on Tuesday expressed serious concern over huge difference in figures of detections/recovery etc presented by the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

During the scrutiny of the audit objections related to the year 2010-2011, the PAC observed that the figures presented before the committee by the audit officials were entirely different than those of FBR. According to the FBR’s statistics, the amount was far less than the audit report had claimed.

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

Chairman PAC said that if this was the mistake of your own department then you should fix it and if the FBR is at fault then let us know about it”. “It is highly unfair that the parliamentarian came from across the country to attend this meeting but they could not do anything because the figures presented to us are incorrect,” he further said.

The PAC also sought details from the FBR about the details of auction of vehicles it confiscated from the smugglers. The committee also sought complete inventory of the vehicles given to the FBR officials as well as to the government departments.

During the meeting, Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa briefed the committee that over 50,000 vehicles were cleared under “Vehicle Amnesty Scheme’’ in 2012; adding that there are other goods being smuggled and FBR was trying to stop all kinds of smuggling.

To a question about the performance of FBR, raised by Shafqat Mehmood, chairman FBR said under the performance evaluation system the department has fired many officers including an officer of Grade 21 as the performance of every officer was being evaluated.

During the meeting, the DG Audit Irfan Watoo, informed the committee that the auditors of his department are not getting complete access to the financial records and asked the PAC about full access to the all financial record of the FBR.

Responding to this, Auditor General of Pakistan Rana Asad Amin told the committee that the AGP has evolved mechanism consisting of six points to access the whole financial record.