PERFORMANCE DURING 2002-2003

The Zone wise breakup of units required to be covered under Internal Audit are given in the
Statement-Units covered by Internal Audit.

The posts of 35 PAOs have been newly created in order to meet the reqirement of restructuring and newly created Commisionerates/Directorates. AS soon as the newly created PAOs are in position the total number of PAOs will become 82.

The position of the Commisionerates, Directorates, PAOs and Divisions under the Central Board of Excise & Customs for which Internal Audit was required to be conducted vis-a-vis, Internal Audit conducted by parties during the year 2002-2003 and balance still to be done are tabulated.

After departmental re-organisation in 1998-99 there has been a considerable increase in the size of the Department and 60 new Commissionerate and 60 new Divisions have been created. While the number of units to be audited has increased by 120, (the number is likely to increase as second departmental re-organization is also on the way) there has been no corresponding increase in the staff provided to this organization. The staff position in the Internal Audit wing is the same as on 1.4.1976. As per the existing number of departmental units there is a requirement of at least 11 Internal Audit parties against which only 4 parties are functional. This clearly shows that there is an additional requirement of 7 more parties (each party comprising of at least one Sr./Accounts Officer, one Asstt./Junior Accounts Officer and one Sr. Accountant). This office has always made best efforts to maintain the regularity of audit so that arrears do not accumulate. One such effort has been to assign Divisions inspection to Field Pay & Accounts Offices. During the current year, 52 such programmes were got done from the field PAO's. This arrangement has its own difficulties as the PAO's who are already overburdened with their work are reluctant to undertake additional audit work. However all efforts are being made to make the best use of the manpower available.