NECA sets 2nd term agenda for Buhari ahead swearing in
Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) says President Muhamma dub uh ari will need to priori ti se policies directed at strengthening the productive sector of the economy where lies the potential to create jobs and reduce the country’s frightening unemployment rate.
Buhari is to take oath of office on Wednesday, May 29, 2019, for a second term of four years that will elapse on May 29, 2023. His first four years has seen Nigeria struggling with compounding economic woes.
Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that youth unemployment rate averaged 23.63 percent from 2014 until 2018, reaching an all-time high of 38 percent in the second quarter of 2018, with million soft he citizens continuing to fall below the poverty line.
Timothy Olawale, director
general of NECA, in a document titled “neca’s agenda for government ,” made available to business Day on monday, said the real sector in the last four years had struggled against burden some taxation, poor access to funding, regulatory in sensitivity, even as interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) did little to strengthen to the sector.
He said “among the urgent support needed by the real sector is access to single digit capital, a business-friendly exchange rate regime, policy to ensure the patronage of made-in-nigeria goods, concerted efforts at curbing smuggling and associated activities, bailout sand corporate tax incentives that will enable the expansion of local businesses, enforcement of harmonised taxes and levies by the Joint Tax Board at all levels of government.”
The employers’ body also pointed to the need for the government in its second term to build infrastructure as critical enabler of development. It called on the government to take urgent steps towards the completion of the Apapa Ports road, the Agbara Industrial Estate road and other strategic roads across the country, including rail networks to fasttracked easy movement of goods.
Necessary support should be given to the players in the Power Sector in the interest of the nation.
NECA decried the roles of some of the regulatory agencies of the government in the last four years, which tended to stifle businesses rather than encourage and promote entrepreneurship, saying this had be checked, as the President was set to begin another term of four years.
It argued that the success of any regulatory agency should not be measured by how much income it generated or how many organisations it was able to sanction, but how many businesses it facilitated and supported to thrive, stressing that“there is need to encourage the growth of the real sector through a friendly regulatory environment.”