The Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) has stressed the need to ensure the ongoing reforms initiatives by the federal government aligns with the needs and perspectives of employees and vice versa, to achieve effective and sustainable development outcomes in the country.

The Director-General of NECA, Mr. Adewale Smatt-Oyerinde who spoke at the 4th Employers Summit themed, ” Enabling Sustainable Enterprise in a Transitioning Economy; Aligning Fiscal, Trade and Regulatory Reforms for Rapid Development on Wednesday in Abuja, said the Summit has created the platform for such an alignment to gain fulcrum.

According to him, the objective of the Employers Summit was to gather policy makers and those that would implement the policies, the private sector and employers to come together and build consensus around the reforms to achieve a quantum leap in national economic growth

Smatt-Oyerinde who noted that employers play a major role in promoting national development and economic growth through job creation and payment of taxes, said such contributions were made easy and feasible when government creates an enabling environment for employers to thrive.

He said “NECA believe that there is no better time to get the reformers and those that will implement the reforms as well as those that the reform is supposed to reform to have a conversation and engender consensus around those reforms.

“And for us to make policy recommendations to government on those issues where it pinches the private sector, where it pinches employers, so that definitive solutions or implementation of palliatives or innovation that might ease the pressure on the private sector can come.

“The quasi-employers, like governments and others in that realm, create 2% of it but predominantly, employers create the most of the jobs that we have and from that chain, we realise employers also contribute maximally within the context of national development.

“Because government will make revenue from tax, the subnational will make revenue from payee and the contribution goes around in circles. So for development to actually be organic, you must create an enabled environment for employers to thrive, for businesses to thrive, so that the economy can grow organically.”