General Financial Rules (GFR)

📜 What GFR Is

The General Financial Rules (GFR), issued by the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, are the compendium of rules governing financial management across the Government of India — how public money is drawn, sanctioned, spent and accounted for. The current version, GFR 2017, is a significant revision of the earlier GFR 2005, consolidated to bring in modern, technology-enabled procurement and simplify compliance. As an organisation handling large public funds (EPF contributions), EPFO's own financial administration operates within this framework — making GFR a distinctly APFC-relevant subject (it does not appear in the EO/AO syllabus).

💰 Budgeting & Expenditure Control

• Budget preparation and execution: how spending departments estimate, seek approval for, and then execute their annual budget allocation.
• Re-appropriation: the rules for transferring funds between heads within an overall budget grant.
• Delegation of financial powers: which authority (at what rank) can sanction what level of expenditure — the basis of internal financial control.

🛒 Procurement Rules

GFR lays down the government's core procurement principles — ensuring purchases achieve the best value for public money through fair, transparent and competitive processes. Key mechanisms include:

• Tendering methods: open tender (the default, most competitive route), limited tender, single tender (used only for justified exceptional cases), and the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) — now the mandatory default portal for most routine government procurement.
• Works & consultancy procurement: separate, more detailed rules for civil works contracts and hiring of consultants.

💰 Contracts & Payments

GFR sets out the standard principles for government contracts (competitive award, clear terms, performance security) and the payment/accounting mechanisms — including advances, bill processing, and the role of the Pay & Accounts Office in a typical government department's expenditure workflow.

📋 Structural Overview

GFR 2017 is organised into chapters covering General System of Financial Management, Budget Formulation and Implementation, Government Accounts, Works, Procurement of Goods and Services, Contract Management, and Inventory Management — each with associated forms and schedules (GFR forms, referenced by number, e.g. GFR-based purchase/tender forms) used in day-to-day government financial transactions.

🎯 Exam Angle

GFR questions typically test the specific procurement thresholds (which value of purchase requires which tendering method), the year of the current GFR revision (2017), and basic procedural sequencing (budget sanction → procurement → payment → audit). As an APFC officer will directly administer EPFO's own funds under this framework, expect practically-framed questions rather than pure rote recall.