Mercantile Bank Limited presents EconProdigy 3.0, an inter-university policy making competition. This is going to take place in the coming weeks. This is a platform made by North South University's (NSU) Young Economists' Forum (YEF) to encourage and facilitate the student body of the country in actively participating in dialogues revolving around real economic issues. Their participation will not only enrich their skill-sets and experience but also generate ideas and policies to solve relevant issues. The entire programme, in all of its three stages, will be evaluated by educated individuals both in the fields of academia and business landscape.
YEF is a student-run academic club focusing on the accumulation of ideas and expertise through its diverse member-base. YEF aims to voice its ideas and encourage nationwide student-body-participation in economic thought. While achieving these goals, the club oversees the publication of two self-made publications- the Equilibrium and the Chronicle. Besides this, it organises various economics-based competition, the largest of which, returns now for its third installment- EconProdigy 3.0.
Phase1-workshop: During the workshop, to be held tentatively on November 18, the teams will be briefed on the structure of the competition, be introduced to the first round's topic and also be sorted into groups of 20 teams by a random selection process. The theme of this year's competition is urbanisation.
Round 1 - preliminary presentation round: The preliminary round, to be held tentatively on November 27, will consist of each of the teams who will be presenting issues that focus on the causes, states and implications of urbanisation on any particular sector of Bangladesh of their choosing on a specified date in front of a panel of judges. The best teams from each group will qualify for the next round and around 20 teams in total will move on to second round .
Round 2 - cross talk: Cross talk is a debate that will take place between rival teams, as determined by lottery, on specified topics. This talk will be held on Decmeber 04 (tentative). At the end of this round a total of three teams will move onto the final round.
The grand finale - policy dialogue: In this final round, which is expected to be held on December 12, the teams will have to give a presentation of policies on a given scenario or issue. The teams will present on the relevance, implementation, criteria and possible outcomes of the policy in the relevant context. The second runner-up will receive prize money of Tk 25,000, the first runner-up will receive Tk 50,000 and the winner will receive Tk 100,000.
The title sponsor of the event is Mercantile Bank Limited and the event is powered by IPDC Finance Limited. The associate partner is Quasem Group, youth engagement partner is the Financial Express, television partner is Channel i, radio partner is Dhaka FM and snacks partner is Goldmark Foods Limited. The registration deadline is November 16. To know more and updated information about the competition, please visit the Facebook event page of EconProdigy 3.0 (https://www.facebook.com/events/1944940839090786/).
The article was developed by the members of NSU YEF Club. They can be reached at nsuyef@yefonline.net