financial and consulting company, KPMG recently at the annual Chief Financial Officers (CFO) forum in Lagos unveiled the annual CFO outlook survey, which it says will provide valuable insight into how CFOs and their view the Nigerian business environment.
The survey, according to KPMG, is the views of CFOs on the outlook of their businesses in 2019; what they believe the government should prioritise to create an enabling environment and the impact of the finance function in achieving organizational goal.
The report noted that, over the last twelve years, the Nigerian economy has experienced some relative stability with a deceleration in the rate of inflation and stable foreign exchange rates, citing stable oil prices, stability in domestic oil production and improvement in foreign exchange availability.
Reviewing the survey, Tola Adeyemi, Partner & Head, Audit Services at KPMG Nigeria stated that the survey revealed that the critical ‘stay awake’ issues for CFOs for 2019 are profitability & cost management issues 35 percent, macroeconomic issues 24percent and tax & regulatory issues 20 percent.
The key snapshots
Prospects for growth in 2019: findings from the survey revealed that in contrast to 2018, 17 percent of CFOs are less optimistic about the prospects for growth in the Nigerian economy. This represents a 29 percent decline from last year.
Stay Awake: 35 percent of the CFOs identified profitability & cost management as the most important stay awake issue. This is closely followed by macroeconomic issues.
Impediment to organizational growth: 67 percent of the respodents see regulatory uncertainties, fiscal policy and talent as the top impediments to organizational growth.
CFOs’ activities: 32percent of CFOs indicated that they spend most of their time on strategy-related activities like compliance control and regulatory investigations.
Effectiveness of finance function: 54percent of the respondents identified the skills and competences of human capital as the most important factor in the effectiveness of their finance function.
Data & Analytics: 32 percent noted that organisations have employed analytics for decision making in their operations.
Infrastructure challenges: 31 percent of the respondents identified power supply as the key infrastructure challenge faced by their business.this is closely followed by security and logistic.
Ease of doing business: 84 percent of CFOs agreed that the efforts aimed at the ease of doing business are yet to have an appreciable impact on the majority of businesses.
