NAB chief rubs in corruption claims

ISLAMABAD – The NAB chief Thursday reiterated that the country was losing up to Rs 5-7 billion to corruption daily, strongly rebutting that his Bureau’s recent born-again campaign against corruption was part of some conspiracy to prolong the rule of any near-future interim government.“

There are daily losses of five to seven billion rupees ($51.34 million to $71.88 million)” as a result of inefficiency, corruption and tax shortcomings, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Admiral (r) Fasih Bokhari told a hurriedly-called press conference at NAB Headquarters.On Wednesday, the head of the anti-corruption watchdog was accused by the federal cabinet of making ill-timed allegations ahead of elections and the prime minister formed a four-member ministerial committee to probe the claims.

The cabinet also smelled a rat in a recent Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) report, and Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told the media that as the elections were round the corner, everyone could understand the motive of this anti-corruption campaign.“We are not working on any specific agenda in this regard”, Fasih said as he regretted cabinet’s criticism over NAB’s identifying corruption, adding that gone were the days when the martial laws were imposed and unconstitutional governments used to prolonged their stay. Breaking News  He pointed out that bureau’s estimate was more careful as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the TIP have estimated wastage of Rs10-12 billion daily, which he said was correct if corruption in mega projects is also accounted.The chairman said they were trying to purify the system and they would not be deterred by any kind of opposition or propaganda. “The Bureau is determined to eradicate corruption from the society and will not spare anyone who is doing this heinous crime.

” However, he said the bureau would fully cooperate with the four-member committee. He said corruption was no longer party-centric or incident-centric phenomenon but was now a cross-board attitude.“Rs 5-7 billion daily corruption mentioned by the NAB is a terrible figure but it is an international perception based on various factors of negligence,” he said. He said their estimate was based on annual direct losses as evident from various indicators like tax to GDP ratio whose global acceptable average was 17-20 percent but this ratio was 9 percent in Pakistan, making a total annual loss of Rs2.5-3 trillion. He said the same corruption figure was assessed by the PAC.Fasih said that losses in state enterprises due to incompetence and corruption are Rs300-350 billion. NAB assessment of direct losses in mega projects (miss-procurements) stands at Rs350 billion, he said. He said CPI index by Transparency International since last 10-15 years had been rating Pakistan between 23-27 percent. Decrease in rating must be seen in the perspective of increasing number of countries in the index, he suggested, and pointed out that international corruption evaluation structures were based on direct leakage parameters and not indirect losses.He said indirect losses which have not been quantified by the Bureau include untaxed agriculture sector having 20 percent of GDP‚ revenue department‚ land grabbing and encroachments‚ loans defaults‚ over staffing‚ ghost schools, ghost employments‚ wealth tax losses, custom duties and duty drawbacks. He said only in energy sector, losses due to loadshedding were around Rs960 billion per year that was 2 percent of Pakistan’s GDP.

Pointing to a major problem, the NAB chief said: “Not three, there are only two pillars of state now in Pakistan.” He explained that the two pillars of Legislature and Executive have merged into one, while the other existing pillar is Judiciary. Breaking News The legislators appoint executives of their choice and this is happening on both federal and provincial levels, he said. Also, the problems are being encountered in eliminating corruption because of the disharmony among these three supposed pillars of state, he said, as he emphasised on creating a balance in this troika. Fasih said that corruption was a longstanding issue and even Quaid-e-Azam had stressed its elimination. He said that 59 laws were passed to tackle it since creation of Pakistan but it was imperative to amend the system to eliminate this menace. He said the regulatory system has collapsed which is taking the country downward. Instead of going after the “crocodiles and dirty fish”, it was necessary to plug the loopholes in the system, he added.The NAB chairman said that they all have to jointly fight this menace with dedication and lauded the role played by media in this regard, declaring the media as NAB’s partner. He said NAB’s strategy yielding success rests on pillars of awareness, prevention and prosecution, adding that the bureau recovered Rs80 billion in the current year and it was working on 1,700 corruption cases. “We are trying to stop corruption at source level rather than taking action after corruption is committed because if you stop it at the source level, everything would be purified. Regulators have to safeguard the treasury and we have called regulators in 172 cases.”