There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in

Working capital days definition



This is a very good way to measure how much money (i.e. capital) a company has tied up in capital.

The definition is:

average working capital / annual revenues


What you get is a number which shows how many days it takes for the company to convert its working capital into revenues.

The faster a company does this, the better.

This measure is especially useful when looking at companies which spend a lot on capex, most notably construction companies.

If, for example, it takes 200 days for a construction company to convert its working capital into revenues, that indicates that their could be very significant exposure to interest costs as the working capital may have to be financed by borrowings (such as costly bank loans). 

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