The Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) is working without legal cover for the past several months as the ordinance under which the authority was set up has not been passed by the concerned standing committee, special committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was informed on Thursday.
The special committee, which met Yasmeen Rehman in the chair to review audit objections of the ministry of commerce and discussed the financial years 2004-05 and 2005-06, decided to ask the concerned standing committee to complete reading of the lapsed ordinance at the earliest so that TDAP could work smoothly and efficiently.
Commerce ministry officials told the committee that the Export Marketing Development Fund (EMDF) Board was unable to meet for the last many months as TDAP Ordinance had lapsed. They said EMDF is currently being run under previous rules. Officials disclosed this in response to objections from audit authorities that EMDF was using billions of rupees without maintaining accounts.
The committee also voiced dissatisfaction over performance of commercial attachés working in Pakistani embassies in other countries, saying no method was in place to monitor their working. To a query of Haider Abbas Rizvi, commerce ministry officials told the committee that 62 commercial attaches were working in various embassies of the world.
The committee directed the ministry to evolve an evaluation mechanism for the performance of commercial attaches. It also expressed grave concern at not initiating any action against the commerce ministry and its attached departments, which were found involved in financial irregularities of billion of rupees.
The committee expressed resentment at non-displaying Pakistani goods in the exhibition in Johannesburg, which caused loss of over Rs 1.4 million to the national exchequer. It said overall performance of the commerce ministry was not satisfactory, saying that export of goods worth $25 billion was due to a hike in prices.