#长文创作激励计划#
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CFO of Endries International, an industrial distributor of fasteners to manufacturers in various industries – what are your thoughts on the global economy in 2024 and the economic outlook for your region? We are cautiously optimistic about the outlook for the US economy in 2024, expecting a soft landing rather than a recession. A drop in interest rates will help. Growth is likely to accelerate after the first quarter and accelerate in the second half of the year. Although progress is currently slow, we will benefit from the reshoring of manufacturing to North America or onshore manufacturing, given that our business is primarily focused in the region. We are diversifying our fastener sourcing from China to countries such as Vietnam and India.
How will this affect your company? With the increase in residential construction and the increased demand for products such as home generators from homeowners, we should benefit from easy interest rates, which will boost our end markets. Talent will be a major challenge, and even with a significant increase in wages in recent years, it will not be possible to hire enough warehouse workers. We are exploring automation opportunities using advanced technologies, but it is trying to balance finding affordable solutions with solutions that solve specific problems in our business. We're also starting to experiment with AI in a variety of applications such as pricing, inventory management, and supply chain management, but we still need to see more practical applications.
What are the risks and other key challenges facing your company in 2024 and beyond? Given that 40% of our components come from overseas, the supply chain remains a risk if major geopolitical issues arise. Given the ageing workforce, the personnel aspect will remain a risk. A large proportion of the employees in our warehouses are over 50 years old, and the younger workers are no longer lagging behind them. Against the backdrop of the gig economy and the need for remote work arrangements, the changing dynamics of the job market have a significant impact on talent acquisition and retention. Automation may be part of the solution, but it won't solve the problem entirely.
China CFO of a U.S. healthcare company. What are your thoughts on the global economy in 2024 and the economic outlook for your region? In general, professionals in the financial industry, especially accountants, tend to be a bit pessimistic! I'm not very optimistic about the macroeconomy. Each major country or region has its own unique problems, and given the current trend of supply chain diversification and protectionism, I don't see a solution to these problems if people can't work together.
How will this affect your company? We do not expect cyclical economic trends to have a significant impact on our company or the healthcare industry as a whole, but the trade-related structural trends are important. In China and the United States, there is increasing pressure to develop and produce products locally. As a result, we may face challenges in purchasing and selling. For our North American manufacturing facilities, we buy raw materials from China to produce finished products, but we are unable to source cheaper alternatives of the same quality from elsewhere, so we need to pay higher prices. This will lead to higher inflation and will affect companies and industries. At the same time, we are under pressure to produce locally in China instead of importing finished products from our North American factories. This is driving the healthcare industry to increase investment in China. Recently, there have been some signs of improvement in relations between major countries, which are important for us and other industries. We are also facing increasing competition from local Chinese companies, which have significantly improved their quality and caught up with multinational companies.
What are the risks and other key challenges facing your company in 2024 and beyond? R&D is a matter of acquiring a new product line and combining it with AI technology. AI integration is essential to speed up R&D and improve product quality through more accurate and faster diagnostics, such as diagnostic imaging. However, AI technology is not yet mature, and there are major ethical considerations, especially in terms of liability for misdiagnosis. Therefore, the challenge is to balance economic benefits, ethical issues, and provide better services to patients.
CFO of Narayana Health, an Indian healthcare provider – What are your thoughts on the global economy in 2024 and the economic outlook for your region? The global inflation situation is improving. Interest rates are likely to remain stable globally and in India, and may even be lowered. In elections in different countries, geopolitical issues can be important. At the same time, India's digital economy will continue to attract investors and its share of GDP is growing. Given the large population, technology-based solutions are key to transforming people's lives, governance, and business operations.
How will this affect your company? The main trend in India's healthcare industry is that services are becoming more physically digital, leading to holistic care, digitization (particularly the enhancement of electronic medical records), and the growing financial attractiveness of the sector. The digitization of patient records will improve the quality of care, while problems that may have previously been solved physically can be solved virtually. In India, electronic health records could be a particular industry disruptor that would have the advantage of adopting more flexible and fit-for-purpose technologies that could more naturally integrate advances in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The industry's attractiveness to investors has increased significantly as rising incomes, an increasing insurance population, and other factors have boosted the industry's prospects. Putting all of that together, we're on the cusp of a healthcare revolution. This encourages greater investment in high-quality infrastructure, digitalization, consumer-centric service offerings, and expansion into second- and third-tier cities. All large healthcare companies are currently in a significant capital expenditure cycle.
Our company invests disproportionately in digitalization. We've also been working with a model that we want to be efficient and affordable. As a result, a significant amount of our business expansion is taking place in cities where we already have the capacity and scale.
What are the risks and other key challenges facing your company in 2024 and beyond? For a country like India, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP remain low and a universal health care system is not realistic. The only solution is to eventually move towards universal health coverage. In India, one of the problems with the growth of the healthcare sector is the collapse of the trust ecosystem. Insurance companies don't trust patients, hospitals, and patients don't trust insurance companies, hospitals. We believe that the only way to solve this problem is for us as health care providers to also become payers. We have recently been licensed to start an insurance company. We want to focus on keeping our customers healthy. We'll start small and scale up based on our experience.
ACCA Africa CFO of the Year 2023, Co-Founder, Director and CFO of Rocket Health, a telemedicine company operating in East Africa – what are your thoughts on the global economy in 2024 and the economic outlook for your region? Global economic growth will be quite slow in 2024 due to post-pandemic issues and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Looking more specifically at Uganda, inflation has been declining over the last two to three years compared to other regions, and we have seen a slight increase in the economy. There is also renewed expectation that the African economy will perform better this year than last year, and countries such as Uganda will benefit from loose monetary policy in the United States, which could reduce domestic inflationary pressures and borrowing costs. But Uganda's fiscal policy is likely to be quite tight as the government tries to reduce the debt ratio.
How will this affect your company? My expectations for 2024 certainly depend on the industry I'm in, healthcare. During the pandemic, the sector benefited from increased financial investment and increased capital expenditure, but growth has since slowed and consumers' willingness to prioritize health care spending has slowed. The latter has historically been a problem in Africa, with statistics showing that about 56% of Africans do not have access to health care, one of the reasons being affordability. The industry has also seen mergers and acquisitions between several different healthcare companies that are trying to grab a larger share of the slower-growing market. As a company, one of our key strategies this year is to focus on partnerships that drive business growth.
What are the risks and other key challenges facing your company in 2024 and beyond? Digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are changing the landscape, including how patients receive health care and how employees complete their tasks. This is an area to focus on over the next 12 months, as it can be a risk to the business, but it can also be a benefit. In terms of challenges, first of all, I would like to mention the increase in financial costs. The cost of R&D that drives the growth of innovative firms like ours (with models that are still relatively new in the country or elsewhere in Africa) is an important factor, as it can be quite difficult to convince traditional financial institutions or players to invest. Secondly, there is an increase in operating costs. A large proportion of the medicines and supplies we use in the delivery of our services are imported, which can sometimes be affected by supply chain disruptions or rising import costs. The third is the increasing cost of regulation and compliance, with various requirements changing and tightening in many cases. Increased mobility is also an issue, with younger employees looking for greater flexibility in their work.
While medical personnel often always work in multiple locations at the same time, a new trend is emerging for non-medical personnel, who are now also looking for greater flexibility. 【To be continued】Please stay tuned for the next issue.