ISLAMABAD: A new plan of financial auditing and reporting has been prepared to improve the quality of audit and enhance operational efficiency, besides ensuring good governance in government departments.
This was stated by Auditor-General of Pakistan Muhammad Younas Khan while talking to APP here on Wednesday. He said the volume of audit work has increased manifold with setting up of district government institutions at the district level, which required new measures.
Proper auditing to attain financial improvement cannot be done in the absence of qualified financial managers so a mechanism has to be evolved to meet growing needs of the modern age, he added.
The ongoing Project to Improve Financial Reporting and Auditing (Pifra) is fulfilling the limited needs of the district governments and it is progressing satisfactorily, he added. The Pifra, Younas Khan said, will perform the duties of imparting training and new classification as the quality of audit can be improved through proper training and courses. It is aimed at improving financial reporting, budgeting and auditing system, he said, adding, “We will try to train the workforce to improve quality of work”.
The project will greatly help bring about qualitative change in the field of accounting, auditing, budget processing, reporting procedures, computerisation of accounts and for the betterment of human resources and training, he added. Younas said Pifra-I is under execution and will be completed by May 2004.
Meanwhile, preparation for Pifra-II is under process, with an estimated cost of $180 million. The project envisages computerisation of accounts, budgeting and auditing at district level and self-accounting units, he said. The links between different offices will be established through networking, including options such as dial up connections.
He said the World Bank has already expressed satisfaction on the pace of execution of Pifra-I. He said he has been studying the situation for the past sometime and now it is well set to make headway.
