Skip to main content

Projects Appraisal

Appraisal   Criteria for Projects

There are two broad categories of appraisal criteria: non-discounting criteria and discounting criteria. 
The important non-discounting criteria are :
  • Urgency,
  • Payback period
  • Accounting rate of return
  • Debt service coverage ratio


The important discounting criteria are:
  1. Net Present Value
  2. Benefit Cost Ratio
  3. Internal Rate of Return
  4. Annual Capital Charge

  •  According to urgency criterion projects which are deemed to be more urgent get priority over projects which are regarded as less urgent. The problem with this criterion is: How can the degree of urgency be determined?
  • The payback period is the length of time required to recover  the initial cash outlay on the project. According to this criterion, a project is acceptable if its payback period is less than certain specified payback period.
  • The Accounting Rate of Return also referred to as the average rate of return, is  a measure of profitability which relates income to investment, both measured in accounting terms. A project is deemed acceptable if its accounting rate of return exceeds a certain cut off rate of return.
  • The net present value of a project is equal to the sum of the present value of all the cash flows (outflows and inflows) associated with the project. A project is acceptable if its net present value exceeds zero.
  • Benefit Cost Ratio   (Present Value of Benefits—Initial Investments) divided by Initial Investment. A project is feasible if the benefit cost ratio exceeds 0
  • The internal rate of return of a project is the discount rate that makes net present value equal to zero. A Project is acceptable if its rate of internal return exceeds the cost of capital.



So we see that the most commonly used method for evaluating small sized investments is the payback method. For larger investments accounting rate of return and recently discounted cash flow methods are commonly employed. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Money Markets Instruments

Money Market Securities in India The money market includes instruments for raising and investing funds for periods ranging from one day up to one year. Money market securities consist of repos/reverse repos, CBLOs ( collateralized borrowing and lending obligations),certificates of deposits, treasury bills, and commercial paper. All these securities are issued at a discount and redeemed at par, and are zero coupon in structure.  Money markets also include inter-bank call markets that are overnight lending transactions between banks, inter- bank terms markets that  are long term deposits between banks, and interoperate deposits, which are short term lending between companies. These transactions do not involve creation of a debt security and are therefore not included here. The Participants in the money market include banks, primary dealers, financial institutions, mutual funds, provident and pension funds, companies and the government. The purpose of the money market is to e...

A Summary of Behavioral Finance

The central assumption of the traditional finance model is that people are rational. The behavioral finance model , however , argues that people suffer from cognitive and emotional biases and act in a seemingly irrational manner. The important heuristic-driven biases and cognitive errors that impair judgment are : representativeness, overconfidence, anchoring, aversion to ambiguity, and innumeracy. The form used to describe a problem has a bearing on decision making, Frame dependence stems from a mix of cognitive and emotional factors. The prospects theory describes how people frame and value a decision involving uncertainty. People feel more for a pain from a loss than the pleasure from an equal gain-about two and half times as strongly. This phenomenon is referred to as loss aversion . People tend to  separate their money into various mental accounts and treat a rupee in one account differently from a rupee in another because each account has a different significance...

NPV-Net Present Value :Capital Budgeting Concepts

DEFINITION OF 'NET PRESENT VALUE - NPV' Net Present Value (NPV) is the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows. NPV is used in   capital budgeting   to analyze the profitability of a projected   investment   or project.  The following is the formula for calculating NPV:  where C t  = net cash inflow during the period t C o  = total initial investment costs r =   discount rate , and t = number of time periods  A positive net present value indicates that the projected   earnings   generated by a project or investment (in present dollars) exceeds the anticipated costs (also in present dollars). Generally, an investment with a positive NPV will be a profitable one and one with a negative NPV will result in a   net loss . This concept is the basis for the   Net Present Value Rule , which dictates that the only investments that should be made are th...