Missing funds, missing accountability

July 14, 2026

Rs75 billion of public money meant for the Sustainable Development Goals programme has vanished into a fog of missing records and unanswered questions. This is not a small clerical slip. It is a serious failure of accountability at the heart of government.

The audit report makes one thing painfully clear. Nobody can say with confidence where this enormous sum actually went. Federal ministries, divisions, and provincial governments received these funds during 2024-25. Members of Parliament were also given allocations. Yet the Cabinet Division, which should have complete oversight, could not give auditors a clear account of how the money was spent.

This is unacceptable. Public funds exist to serve the public. When Rs75 billion cannot be tracked, it raises an obvious question. Who is responsible, and why has nobody been held to account.

The audit found that even basic information was missing. There was no proper record showing how funds were distributed across provinces. There was no data on which projects were completed and which were not. Monthly progress reports, a basic requirement for any development programme, were simply not collected from the departments involved.

Such gaps do not happen by accident. They happen when there is no real system of monitoring in place, and when nobody feels obligated to explain their spending. This culture of loose record keeping must end.

The Cabinet Division cannot escape responsibility here. As the body meant to supervise this programme, it had a duty to demand transparency from every department that received funds. It failed in that duty. Auditors were right to state plainly that transparency could not be proven.

The recommendations in the report are sensible and overdue. A central record of all development projects would make monitoring far easier. A strong and effective accountability mechanism would prevent this kind of financial mismanagement from repeating itself.

But recommendations alone change nothing. What is needed now is action. Those who failed to maintain records must explain themselves. Departments that cannot account for public money should face real consequences, not just a mention in an audit report that gathers dust.

We  cannot afford this level of carelessness with development funds meant to improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Every rupee spent, or misspent, deserves a clear paper trail. Until that becomes standard practice, public trust in these programmes will keep eroding. The government must treat this audit not as a formality, but as a warning it cannot ignore.