Pakistan’s newly appointed Auditor General, Maqbool Ahmed Gondal, faces immediate challenges following a major U-turn by the Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) office on its controversial audit report, which initially claimed irregularities of Rs376 trillion in federal accounts, Dawn reported.
Mr. Gondal, sworn in as the country’s 22nd AGP on Monday at the Supreme Court, inherits the fallout from the ‘Consolidated Audit Report of Federal Government for Audit Year 2024-25,’ which had sparked nationwide disbelief due to figures exceeding the country’s total GDP by 3.5 times.
The original report, released in August under outgoing AGP Muhammad Ajmal Gondal, cited procurement irregularities of Rs284 trillion, defective civil works of Rs85.6 trillion, receivables of Rs2.5 trillion, and unresolved circular debt of Rs1.2 trillion.
After sustained media scrutiny and criticism, the AGP office admitted that “a few typos” had inflated the numbers. The revised figure now stands at Rs9.769 trillion — still a substantial sum, roughly two-thirds of the federal budget for FY2023-24.
The corrected report, uploaded last week to the AGP website, clarifies that the irregularities include multiple-year items such as circular debt, land disputes, and corporate accounts.
A former provincial auditor general said that multiple audit criteria can multiply reported irregularities. “A single project could be judged against over a dozen rules. Each step falling under different legal provisions can create overlapping audit observations,” he said, noting that these are irregularities, not corruption.
The new auditor general now faces the task of restoring credibility to the office and ensuring the corrected figures are accurately understood by policymakers, media, and the public.
