Suppose Bangladesh took part in a World Cup with 36 countries. Won the gold medal. Not only that, the countries behind Bangladesh in the ranking are the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan! Yes, the youngsters representing the red-green have got the eighth place after leaving them behind. This achievement came in the World Economics Cup held in China. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say World Cup. Bangladesh won a total of six medals including one gold, one silver and four bronze medals in the competition.
The World Economics Cup was started with the aim of finding the future leadership of the world economy. In 2020, for the first time, this gathering of economics students from all over the world was held. Like last year, the entire competition was held online due to the Corona epidemic. This year, 285 contestants from 52 teams from 36 countries, including Bangladesh, took part in this global level competition.
This time Bangladesh team was Abrar Jamil of St. Joseph Higher Secondary School, Zarif Shafaqat of Mastermind and Md. Tanzim Hossain, Scholastic Syed Muntasir Tasdid, Rafael Jibran of Sunnydale and Armin Ahmed of Sunbeams. Akhtar Ahmed was the coach of the six contestants. Among the contestants, Abrar won gold, Zarif won silver and the rest won bronze medals. In addition to winning medals, Abrar and Tasdid are in the top ten of the ‘Deep Fundamental’ round.
This time the event was held in three different stages. The first stage of the competition is based on the fundamentals of economics. In the multiple choice system, the questions are asked from within the macro and microeconomics. In the second step, the contestants have to think deeply within 150 minutes and find the answers to some questions. In the last step, they are given a topic, from which they have to give a group presentation in front of the jury within 24 hours. And there must be creativity and innovative thinking in that presentation.
Bangladesh also won a gold, two silver and two bronze medals in the first edition last year. At the national level, in the competition organized by Bangladesh Economics Olympiad, out of about 1,500 competitors, 22 members were selected for the national camp. From there, ‘Team Bangladesh’ of the World Cup of Economy was formed with six members after various screenings.
Tanjim, the captain of the Bangladesh team, said, “Going to China to compete and participating online at home are two different things, but there was no shortage of competition in any World Cup, even in the World Economics Cup.” Apart from that, this is the first time that all of us have the experience of representing Bangladesh in such a competition. That is why it was in my mind to present Bangladesh in this World Economic Forum. ‘ —However, the members of the Bangladesh team are a little upset because of the online competition. Being able to take part directly would be an opportunity to make friends with competitors from other countries, to learn about each other’s cultures. However, they have already connected with each other through various social media. So even if not seen directly, friendship has developed from one end of the world to the other.
Tanzim said that even though it was organized online, there was no one-off discount in the competition. Instead, a jury made up of teachers from world-renowned MIT, Oxford and Harvard universities challenged the contestants on one question after another. The presentation of the third episode was especially difficult. However, in the end, the Bangladesh team went north. Because, no matter how difficult the question was, the contestants were confident — we could.