The soaring rise in public arrears has become a common trend in our country in the past several years. Unnecessary expenditures by the government departments, offices, provincial offices, local levels and various agencies have given rise to government arrears. Organisations, offices and agencies responsible for making unnecessary spending often fail to clear their arrears in time. Whenever the government and public agencies spend lavishly on unwanted goods and services, it leads towards the rise of the total amount of government outstanding payment.

The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has put the 2020/2021 fiscal year's public arrears at Rs. 104 billion. The 58th annual report by the OAG, which was presented to the President the other day, stated that the country had to recover Rs. 26. 4 billion arrears in the last fiscal year but could collect only Rs 6.1 billion. What is irksome is the fact that the recovered arrears have slumped every year. Lesser revenue collection, idle deposits at the treasury, higher payments and expenditures beyond legal parameters are regarded as arrears. The OAG report reveals that government departments, government-funded agencies and three-tier governments (federal, provincial and local) have been involved in creating arrears, an outcome of spending of allocated budgets more than they clear by adhering to government regulations.

The OAG peruses closely the spending of every government or public agency and often takes them to the task should they fail to clear their arrears in time. Many of these agencies are found responsible for making unnecessary spending for which they cannot furnish sound reasoning as much of such spending is carried out by violating the regulations. Of late, there have been reports that government departments and agencies are engaged in making excessive spending crossing the legal parameters. There are other reasons, leading arrears to rise. According to the OAG, public accountability remains poor in budget and project implementation, revenue administration, public property management, execution of fiscal federalism and public service dissemination. Most programmes of the sub-national bodies are unproductive and distributary while administrative costs are high. The lack of a clear standard on providing facilities to the public office holders too can be regarded as arrears impelling reason as most of the public office holders are found seeking facilities without caring for any criteria.

The rising level of government arrears creates pressures on the national economy and gives the government a tough time balancing its revenues and spending for streamlining the national economy. If a considerable amount of its revenues ends on the unrequired spending of the government agencies, one can only imagine how tough it would be for the government to generate revenues for implementing development programmes. The timely recovery of government arrears is thus highly imperative. The annual Auditor General's report, which has thrown a spotlight on ever-increasing government arrears, should allow our authority to curb growing public expenditures on unnecessary goods and services. Complete control of such spending would help expedite development projects. Good fiscal governance in the country can only be realised if the authority remains alert against this and does not allow public offices and sub-national bodies to go on making lavish spending.