FAQ
Are Bhutan's audit irregularities really rising?
The headline figure rose sharply — flagged construction-procurement irregularities reached Nu 9,987 million in FY 2024–25, up from Nu 407 million in 2017 — but that number is misleading without one fact: 78% of it (Nu 7,790 million) is a single mega-project, Punatsangchhu-II hydropower. Strip that out and the rest, about Nu 2,197 million, is spread across hundreds of agencies. Bhutan remains the least-corrupt country in South Asia, and its national integrity score barely moved (7.97 to 8.01). The real story is concentration in one project, not a country-wide rise in corruption.
It is easy to read a jump from Nu 407 million to Nu 9,987 million as evidence of spiralling corruption. The audit data says something more specific.
Nearly four-fifths of the FY 2024–25 total sits in one hydropower mega-project. The Auditor-General’s own reporting treats that item as distorting the trend. Everything else — Nu 2,197 million across the entire rest of the public sector — is broadly in line with prior years. That is why the survey-based integrity score did not move even as the headline number multiplied. The honest framing is in Paradox #65; the measurement divergence in Paradox #40.