New Delhi, Jan 28: There have been “irregularities and trust deficit” in certain audits of Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, CAG Shashi Kant Sharma has said while underlining the need for audit of private firms utilising public resources.
He cited various legal and Constitutional provisions to say that CAG can audit power distribution companies (discoms) despite they being private entities.
The issue of auditing the accounts of discoms is pending in court as companies have opposed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s request to CAG for conducting their audit.
Addressing anti-corruption officials of various government departments here, Sharma saidon Wednesday that in PPP projects partners must share trust in the perspective of responsibilities, risk and returns.
“Now in CAG, we have been auditing PPP and there have been basis where we have found that there were certain irregularities and there was a trust deficit. How this trust has to be ensured? Our experience says that there has been some deficiency of trust (in execution of PPP projects),” he said.
Sharma said in many of the audits involving private parties utilising public resources “we have found certain distinct trend of players trying to distort competition, upsetting free market fairness and causing loss to public exchequer as well as to the competitor”.
He cited reports of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) and Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) in this regard.
“It is argued that CAG has no power to audit any private company. I mean to answer this is both yes and no,” the top auditor said.
He said CAG has powers to audit a company or project in which public resources are being utilised and revenue earned by PPP is to be shared by the government.
Sharma said, “To say private sector will be efficient is not always true. To say that PPP will always result in efficiency is not always true. But generally there are cases where there have given good results”.
