KUCHING: As key advisors to business and government, chief financial officers (CFOs) and public practitioners called for action to strengthen economy and public practices in Malaysia.
In a statement, the Malaysian Institute of Accounting (MIA) and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) said they have jointly released the Business and Economic Outlook (BEO) Report 2019.
MIA and ACCA found it timely to join the conversation and share accountants’ perspectives on the key challenges and opportunities for 2019.
“As internal and external business advisors and decision makers, accountants are ideally placed to comment on the market outlook and provide guidance for public and private sector organisations,” said MIA chief executive officer Dr Nurmazilah Datuk Mahzan.
Subsequently, MIA and ACCA organised follow-up roundtables with CFOs and accountants in public practice respectively to gather more data and insights for further action. The findings of these roundtables have been documented in the CFO Roundtable on BEO Report 2019 and the Practitioners’ Roundtable on BEO Report 2019.
“These reports are firsts for MIA that build on the earlier BEO Report 2019. In line with our nation building agenda, MIA is making continuous effort to help improve the performance and governance of business and government,” explained Dr Nurmazilah.
“CFOs and public practitioners are key advisors to business and government who are keenly aware of the latest developments and unfolding issues in the market.
“By tapping their wisdom, MIA trusts that these reports will help provide the insights for private and public sector organisations to inform their policy making and implementation, to help shape sustainable and forward-looking policy and implementation initiatives to build the nation,” added Dr Nurmazilah.
“Commenting on the reports, Edward Ling, ACCA Malaysia Country head said, “These reports are succinct – making them easy to read. The calls to action directly address key challenges and opportunities faced by Malaysian businesses and accountancy firms. They feel like a culmination of years of insights and wisdom distilled into three pages of short paragraphs and several pragmatic action points to tackle one common issue.”
Ling added, “It is our hope that CFOs and practitioners would find these reports relevant and consider incorporating the action points into their strategic plans to help shape the present and future success of their businesses from within. We believe that these additional insights and findings will help support the Malaysian accounting and finance community in their role as partners and advisors to their businesses, corporations and the government.”
Leading CFOs from public listed companies in a cross-spectrum of industries shared their insights at MIA’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Circle roundtable in April 2019.
In summary, CFOs called for various moves to be taken to strengthen the economy.
Among them, is raising productivity through increasing investment in human capital and technology at organisational level, supported by targeted tax incentives and laser-focused policy-making/implementation at government level.
They also called for wage reforms to stimulate domestic demand and consumption to offset global headwinds including decelerating global trade.
The report highlighted that there should be greater regional and global participation focusing on Asean and the Belt and Road Initiative and there is also a need to bridge the talent gap by broadening the talent base, increasing the focus on technical and vocational education training (TVET), and continuous upskilling and reskilling for the Malaysian workforce, funded by tax incentives and subsidies.
“Embracing digitalisation by adopting better organisational data practices; finance function transformation to support the overall strategic business model; upskilling talent; promoting culture change and buy-in for the digital agenda; and ensuring inclusivity for digital native talent. As changemakers, regulators should advocate for finance function transformation with executive decision makers and boards, while government should reengineer education and training syllabi to produce fit-for-digital talent,” it added.
The practitioners’ roundtable in April 2019 involving small and medium practices (SMPs) and larger firms, discussed how the accountancy landscape could be tweaked and enriched to support practitioners and in turn, the business ecosystem.
In summary, practitioners called for renewed focus on areas of judgement in financial statements and audits, especially those involving asset valuation and long-term cash flow projection. This could conceivably be achieved through heightening professional skepticism; keeping abreast of regulations and standards and communicating and clarifying these to clients; reviewing internal processes and controls related to areas of judgement; collaborating with experts in auditing processes, and integrating technologies to support tech transformation e.g. cloud-based auditing.
It also called for leveraging opportunities to scale up and combine resources and expertise through mergers and acquisitions, and extending accounting and finance competencies to SMEs lacking an internal finance function.
Aside from that, they highlighted that there should be greater technology adoption and automation of service offerings supported by government subsidies for adoption of accounting and auditing-specific technologies.