Law ยท Rules
General Financial Rules, 2017
The rules of financial management and procurement for the Government of India. They replaced the General Financial Rules, 2005 and are the source of the procurement procedures that central ministries and departments follow.
- Kind
- Rules
- Year
- 2017
- Administered by
- Ministry of Finance (Department of Expenditure)
- Law stated as at
What it does
The General Financial Rules, 2017 are a compendium of the rules on how the Government of India handles money. They cover budgeting and the control of expenditure, the receipt and custody of public money, grants and, in a long chapter, the procurement of goods and services. They are executive rules and not a statute, issued by the Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, and they replaced the General Financial Rules, 2005.
The procurement chapter is the one a supplier meets. It states the principles on which public buying is conducted and the modes of bidding, and it leaves the working procedure of each ministry to be settled within those principles. Supplementary manuals of the Department of Expenditure, such as those on procurement of goods and of works, set out the practice.
Who it binds
Ministries and departments of the Central Government and the organisations attached to them. The Rules do not bind a private supplier directly; they reach it through the tender documents and the contract, whose terms follow them. State governments and public sector undertakings have their own rules, though many adopt the central pattern, and the Ministry of Defence frames its own manuals within the Rules.
What has changed, and when
The 2017 Rules were issued in place of the 2005 Rules, and the Department of Expenditure amends them by office memoranda, so the Rules in force are the 2017 text read with the amendments since. A tender is judged against the rules and manuals current on its date of issue. This practice does not set out the amendment history here.
What turns on it in practice
For the contracts and procurement practice, the Rules matter in two ways. They are the source of the standard conditions on bid security, performance security and the mode of bidding in central tenders, and a tender condition that departs from them is open to question for that reason. And they are the authority on which other procurement documents rest.
The site's note on the Defence Procurement Manual 2025 shows the second use. The Manual states that it is laid down in terms of Rule 142 of the General Financial Rules, 2017, which is how the Ministry of Defence is able to run its own procedure. A supplier reading the Manual is therefore reading a document that sits under the Rules, and where a question arises about the Manual's authority the Rules are the place to look.
Two points follow for a supplier. A condition in a standard form that cannot be negotiated away, such as the cap on liquidated damages, is usually a feature of the Manual or the Rules, and an attempt to bargain it down meets that obstacle; the Manual itself allows a seller's deviation only with approval at a high level. And a challenge to a tender decision is argued on fairness and on the departure from the published procedure, so the Rules and the manuals supply the standard of what the procedure was.
The 2005 Rules remain relevant for contracts and procedures that date from before 2017, and the site lists them as a related instrument.
Reference