Despite reports of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) showing continuous rise in unaccounted expenditure in the last few years, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has not discussed the last three reports of the constitutional body.

After the OAG submits the report to the President, the President’s Office sends the report to Parliament for discussions.  Then, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee discusses unaccounted transactions (irregularities) in every ministry and instructs government agencies to clear such accounted transactions.

The government office should either clear such transactions either recovering from those responsible for creating irregularities or adjusting them through proper accounting. Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Secretariat said the PAC had not held discussion on the OAG’s 53th, 54th and 55th reports detailing the auditing of fiscal years 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17.

Parliamentary Committee Secretary Roj Nath Pandey said, “Discussion on entire report of previous fiscal years has not taken place for the last several years. There has been discussion on the financial transaction of limited number of offices under a few ministries before fiscal year 2014-15.”

The house panel was preparing an annual action plan where discussions on OAG report has been pre-scheduled. “Once the committee approves the action plan, discussion on OAG report begins,” he added.

The amount of unaccounted expenditure has risen with the parliamentary committee not being active to discuss the issue under the erstwhile parliament.  According to OAG, the amount of unaccounted expenditure has been rising in the past five years up to fiscal 2016-17.

With the government offices not following the due procedure for expenditure, the irregularities of Rs120.91 billion accumulated in the fiscal year 2016-17. In the previous fiscal 2015-16, this amount was Rs97.43 billion.

With government offices failing to clear such amounts for years, it has piled up to reach Rs500 billion as of fiscal 2016-17, according to the OAG report.

Parliament office officials blamed previous PACs for failing to discuss OAG reports. They gave priority to preparing the constitution and holding elections as per the new constitution, officials said. This also helped government officials to indulge in financial irregularities due to lack of supervision, according to OAG officials.

OAG Spokesperson Bishnu Prasad Rijal said, “The house committee plays an important role in monitoring the progress in clearing the irregularities. Discussing the OAG report is an important business of the PAC.”

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s office held discussions with different ministries and offices under them last week on the status of implementing recommendations of OAG’s 55th annual report.

The PMO has also sought progress report on the implementation of recommendations of the last three annual reports of the OAG, according to PMO Secretary Kedar Bahadur Adhikari.