Leading industry and business concerns in Nigeria will continue to be under the influence of foreign exchange (forex) risk between this year and next.

The revelation stemmed from the release of a survey of 94 executives of multinationals, large sized public and private companies across various industries by KPMG Nigeria.

The survey which dwelt mainly on major risks affecting investments in recent times, ranked forex risk as the highest hurdle that might impact organisations over the next two years.

Presenting the survey, titled: ‘Top Ten Business Risks 2018/2019,to the Nigerian media in Lagos, KPMG said it identified a total of 31 business risks and proffered solutions to mitigate the risks.

Among the top 10 risks identified during the survey include forex risk, fiscal and monetary policy risk, regulatory risk, crude oil price risk, brand and reputational risk, customer attrition risk, political risk, liquidity risk, insecurity risk and interest rate risk.

In his remarks, the Partner and Head of Risk Consulting KPMG, Mr. Olumide Olayinka said the survey which was KPMG’s second edition was spanned from December 2017 to February 2018. According to him, “The report represents our findings from the risk survey from about 94 executives and directors of large sized public and private companies across a number of industries in Nigeria. And these executives include the chief risk officers of those organisations, chief compliance officers and indeed the chief audit executives”.

Business Hilights recalls that recalls that during the recessionary period last year, several businesses dependant on forex suffered serious drop in production activities.

Besides, up till now, some sectors including the telecoms sector are still decrying the inclusion of some of its infrastructure building materials and equipments on the Central bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) 41 items barred from flexible forex access.