Entering the new year under the sign of the rabbit, a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese Culture, 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope.

There is a buzz at NCI as we enter our 35th year. Since 1985 we have grown to over 190 staff in 4 countries who now support more than 3,500 clients across the Asia Pacific region.

With over 82,000 cases at February 27 and more countries confirming infections it seems not only China will be economically impacted directly with more localised quarantine areas and borders being closed. The social and humanitarian implications of the outbreak are, rightfully, to the front of the world’s thinking.

Recently there have been economic concerns in the Asian region and this has been echoed by our clients who represent a diverse range of industries. It also supports recent articles that say Singapore is experiencing some headwinds in global trade which is impacting revenue and margins.

A great deal has been written on this subject and it’s clear this development of new order protectionism will hurt both countries. There is no easy solution as China needs USA demand and domestic manufacturing for assembly and components – think Apple products.

While we’re rapidly progressing through 2019, we should stop to take a moment and reflect on a couple of points from our most recent Client Satisfaction Survey.

We have seen more discussions with CFO’s on the new IFRS 9 rules which were introduced in January 2018 and will be mirrored by US GAAP standards (ASU 2016-13) effective in 2019.

As individuals, many of us will have seen emails from the likes of Google, EBay, Paypal etc advising us of their commitment to the new “GDPR”. The GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation and is being introduced across the EU from 25 May 2018.