By Alex C
Over 80 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) across various sectors of the Nigerian economy have foreseen a rise in cash flows, gross margins and revenue for businesses in Nigeria for the year 2014.
This development is evident in the recent CFOs’ report by KPMG, a report awaiting launch on July 25, 2014.
KPMG, one of the world’s professional accounting conglomerate, conducted a survey among CFOs across the top leading 43 Nigerian companies in various sectors of the economy on three key areas – to gauge their thoughts on business outlook in Nigeria for 2014, the role of CFOs in internal audit, and the evolution of the roles of CFOs.
Tola Adeyemi, head, Audit Services, KPMG, said that CFOs are cautiously optimistic about the prospects of businesses in Nigeria with the optimism absolutely driven by the fact that Nigeria still has the basic fundamentals to drive businesses, the stability of fiscal policies in recent years, and increasing nature e-commerce.
According to Adeyemi, “There are constant significant improvement on internet trading and e-commerce, with Nigeria being the Africa’s largest economy having strong business fundamentals, with these, cash flows, revenue and gross margins for Nigerian businesses are expected to experience increase or could be relatively stable, nonetheless. CFOs are wary of the threats that could be posed by power, taxation, regulation, infrastructure, and security, if these threats are not traded with caution.”
The Federal Government had earlier handed over the power sector to private investors, which depicts a bold step to easing the instability of power supply, with the current situation there are still lots more of efficiencies needed urgently to step up transmission, generation and distribution to allow business flourish.
CFOs still believe that the tax systems in Nigeria are still complicated with a barrage of cumbersome policies that need clarification. Adeyemi pointed out that “there are urgent needs to intensify the tax base, and eliminate all forms of multiple taxation. The paucity, delay, and complexity of regulations in the areas of registering companies, properties, transport systems, security, that has left some parts of the country desolate, and the telecom sector thus are other potential threats that need to be properly and expeditiously addressed.”
Segun Sowande of KPMG disclosed that KMPG is driven to conduct CFOs survey to contribute its own quota by solving some of the problems that have been identified by the top CFOs across the various sectors.
“We see ourselves as an intermediary between the government and business owners; with this intermediary role that KPMG has assumed, there are huge possibilities of helping to providing solutions to the identified problems,” he added.