Over the last twelve months, the Nigerian economy has experienced some relative stability with a deceleration in the rate of inflation and stable foreign exchange rates. This is largely due to stable oil prices, stability in domestic oil production and improvement in foreign exchange availability. The build up to the 2019 elections however created some level of uncertainty in the business environment and led to decreased foreign capital inflows and declining stock prices.

We obtained the views of CFOs on the outlook for their businesses in 2019, what they believe the Government should prioritize to create an enabling environment and the impact of the finance function in achieving organisational goals. In comparison to 2018, CFOs are much less optimistic about the prospects for growth in the Nigerian Economy. This may be due to the uncertainty that surrounded the 2019 elections and concerns around the perceived unwillingness of the political class to address some of the imbalances in the Nigerian economy.

Our study revealed that the critical ‘stay awake’ issues for CFOs for 2019 are:

• Profitability & cost management issues (35%)
• Macroeconomic issues (24%)
• Tax & regulatory policy (20%)

In some respects these are the traditional stay awake issues one would expect within the context of a fragile economy.

Government’s sustained focus on increasing revenue through taxation remains a key issue. This is consistent with our survey outcome from 2018. CFOs remain concerned about ambiguous tax laws, the perceived aggressive tax collection drive by government and multiplicity of taxes.

Click to download and read more on KPMG's indepth insight in this year's CFO Outlook Report.