Nedbank & Old Mutual Budget Speech Competition offers cash and illustrious economic career prospects

Aspiring students with an interest in the economy and financial markets have a chance to win big cash prizes in the Nedbank & Old Mutual Budget Speech Competition, which is open for entries until 31 July. 

Previous winner Charvana Naidoo, who took top honours in 2023, says it marked a “significant turning point” in her career, which led to her entering Nedbank’s corporate investment banking graduate programme. Her winning essay examined South Africa’s medium-term economic growth prospects by analysing the major contributing factors to economic growth in the medium term between 2002 and 2007 and from 2015 to 2019.

She joins previous winners Isaah Mhlanga, chief economist at RMB, and Ingrid Woolard, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University. Woolard is a research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labour based in Bonn, a senior research associate at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki, a research associate of the Commitment to Equity Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and a board member of the Partnership for Economic Policy in Kenya.  

“There was a fair amount of research that I put into my essay, and I went down a slightly different road, looking at labour policies as being one of the major contributing factors to South Africa’s economic growth,” Naidoo says. 

Having graduated with a degree in behavioural psychology and economics on a bursary, she put her prize money towards accommodation and her first step to independence as a graduate analyst.

“I wanted to start standing on my own two feet, being less dependent on my parents, and forging my own path,” she says. 

Naidoo says being in the graduate programme has been a huge learning curve on its own. 

“I find myself doing everything from financial modelling to interacting with clients and getting an understanding of different companies, to figuring out how you can grow a company, to reading legal agreements, which I never thought I'd find myself doing,” she says. 

This year, undergraduates entering the competition will be asked to: “Discuss the impact of public debt on government finances in developing economies, focusing on South Africa”. 

Postgraduate students will be answering this question: “What are the prospects for medium-term economic growth in South Africa against the background of the possibility of a coalition government at a national government level?” 

Postgrad students are challenged to analyse and predict the future economic trajectory of South Africa, considering the political landscape and the possibility of coalition governance. 

Prizes range from R20,000 to R60,000 in the undergraduate category and from R50,000 to R150,000 in the postgraduate category.

Naidoo says the competition allowed her to apply the theory she had learnt to a real-life scenario. 

“Youth are the future and our solutions deserve to be heard, so it’s great we have this platform. Students who are entering the competition need to bear in mind the value of perseverance, embrace the learning journey, regardless of the outcome, and use this experience to refine their skills and expand their network.” DM