Part A
“Capital budgeting over the years has become a sophisticated process for the finance officer. The different methods available to the finance officer have increased and become more accurate and centred upon the goal of maximizing wealth. However has there been an increase in the usage of these new methods or are decision makers still using the easier methods?”

Capital budgeting is a tool management use to make investment decisions. Despite the pitfalls pointed out in Yee-Ching Lilian Chan’s article “Use of capital budgeting techniques and an analytic approach to capital investment decisions in Canadian Municipal Governments”, which includes overemphasis on the quantifiable aspects of capital projects, random cut offs on the timing and the amount of cash flows, Unrealistic discount rates or IRR assumptions. Methods such as profitability index, internal rate of return, breakeven, payback period and net present value are all discounted cash flows which are commonly used in practice.
In 2001 Elijelly, A & Abuldris published an article “ A survey of capital budgeting techniques in the public and private sectors of a less developed country, Sudan” They concluded that most public enterprises in less developed countries, do not apply any capital budgeting methods when making investment decisions. The payback method was the most widely used followed by the Internal rate of return in the private and public sectors that did use capital budgeting techniques.
“In contrast to the traditional discounted cash flow analysis academics are beginning to talk about and some companies have incorporated real option analysis and economic value added metrics into their capital budgeting decision-making process” (Farragher, et all 2001)
Problems with the discounted cash flow models may have led some firms to go with the easier techniques. In “Capital budgeting models: theory vs.