New Auditor General Inherits Fallout From ‘Most Expensive Typo’

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s newly appointed Auditor General, Maqbool Ahmed Gondal, faces an immediate challenge: cleaning up the credibility crisis left by his predecessor after the office admitted to a monumental error in its federal audit report.

Sworn in as the 22nd Auditor General at the Supreme Court on Monday, Mr. Gondal begins a four-year tenure already under pressure. His office is grappling with the aftermath of an inflated claim that federal irregularities amounted to an astronomical Rs376 trillion—more than three times the size of Pakistan’s GDP.

Fallout from the Error

• The original report, released in August, alleged procurement irregularities of Rs284tr, defective civil works worth Rs85.6tr, and receivables of Rs2.5tr.
• Following media scrutiny and internal disbelief, the AGP’s office backtracked, blaming “typos” for the mistake.
• The revised figure stands at Rs9.769 trillion, still a massive sum—nearly two-thirds of the federal budget.

Expert Reactions

Economists and auditors stress that the bloated figure resulted from aggregation errors and over-classification of “irregularities.” Many of these, they say, represent procedural lapses rather than verified financial losses.

Dr. Vaqar Ahmad of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute explained that AGP reports often multiply irregularities by applying multiple compliance checks to the same project, giving an exaggerated picture of misuse.

A former provincial auditor general clarified that these numbers do not equate to corruption but reflect flaws in how audits are conducted under outdated systems.

Way Forward

Experts argue that the AGP office must modernize auditing practices, shifting from procedural fault-finding to assessing “value for money” in public spending. For Mr. Gondal, restoring credibility and steering Pakistan’s auditing system toward global standards will be his first—and perhaps toughest—test.

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