Office of Comptroller And Auditor General: 6.4 lakh objections struck off at one go
The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (OCAG) has decided to consider 640,000 general audit objections, filed from 1971-1972 to 2009-2010 fiscal year, as resolved.
In an order issued on Sunday, the office said the decision was made because the traditional audit objection settlement activities were not being considered as "cost effective".
Most of the general audit objections are related to methodical and managerial errors and those are less significant in consideration of financial irregularities, said the order.
"We have settled all general audit objections filed from 1971-1972 to 2009-2010 fiscal year, except those involving serious financial irregularities, through an office order issued on June 14," a top CAG official said on Wednesday.
The official said they have already informed the officials concerned regarding the order.
Officials said there were about 8 lakh unresolved audit objections, and 80 percent of them were general audit objections. Decisions on a large number of objections had been pending for several decades, and settling those was one of the major challenges for the CAG office.
About 80 percent of the unresolved audit objections are general audit objection in nature, the office order said.
It said both the executive authorities and the CAG office need to engage huge manpower, time and resources to resolve the audit objections. That's why timely quality performance and financial audit cannot be brought to the desired level.
In order to better use the manpower, time, and money of the executive authorities and the CAG office, ease the sufferings in the pension approval process, and strengthen the activities of quality audit settlement and financial audit, the CAG of Bangladesh has made the decision to consider all general audit objections, filed from 1971-72 to 2009-2010 fiscal year, as settled, said the office order.
However, steps will be taken in line with court orders if there is any case in connection with the unresolved audit objections, added the order, signed by Deputy CAG Mahbubul Hoque.
A letter attached to the order said most of the general audit objections were so old that those became insignificant with the passage of time. The rate of resolving the objections was very low considering the amount of time and work hours spent on those.
"Identifying those involved in the audit objections become tough as the objections were filed long ago. That's why decisive measures cannot be taken in regards to most of the objections," said the letter.
As a constitutional body, the OCAG is responsible for auditing government receipts and public spending. It also ascertains whether expenditures have yielded value for money in government offices, public bodies and statutory organisations.
The OCAG audit report includes serious unresolved audit objections which are sent to parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) for discussions.
Replying to a query from a lawmaker, former finance minister AMA Muhith in June 2016 told the previous parliament that 876,013 audit objections involving Tk 778,739.85 crore were pending decisions.
The amount was more than double of the 2016-17 fiscal's proposed budget figure of Tk 340,605 crore.