PERFORMANCE AUDITING IN PAKISTAN By Muhammad Akram Khan Former Deputy Auditor General of Pakistan makram1000@gmail.com HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS Performance auditing in Pakistan became known through the efforts of the Auditor-General. It is still not widely known in the private sector. Although, performance auditing, per se, started in Pakistan in 1981 yet its genesis can be traced to much earlier dates in the history of the Auditor-General's Department. We can notice the seeds of performance auditing in the Audit Code of the Department which was issued by the British colonial government in 1938. In those days the concepts of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness which have now become popular were little known. In fact, we can see that the authors of the Audit Code in those days were not even quite clear about some of the concepts they prescribed. From hindsight, we can now understand that they, perhaps, intended to achieve the same objectives as we now wish to obtain through performance auditing. Some extracts from the Audit Code of the Department of the Auditor-General as developed by the colonial British government but only marginally changed afterwards and in force even at present are as follows: "45. Implicit in the provisions of the Order cited in the preceding Article is the condition that the expenditure should be incurred with due regard to broad and general principles of financial propriety. Any cases involving breach of these principles and thus resulting in improper expenditure or waste of public money should be treated by Audit in the same manner as cases of irregular or unauthorized expenditure." ( Italics added.) "82. Cases may arise in which though no audit objection can be taken to the terms of an order of delegation, or other financial rule, yet the Accountant General feels that the order is likely