In order to encourage the final year Agricultural Economics students to keep up to date with current economic affairs, a competition was held in one of the department’s final year modules. The competition required the students to forecast eight macro-economic variables every month. The variables were growth in 2019Q2, Inflation, Food Inflation, ZAR/USD exchange rate, Brent Crude Oil Prices, the Prime Interest Rate, R186 government bond yields and the balance on the current account. Results were evaluated based on a consensus benchmark. This exercisse also encouraged the students to interact and have discussions related to the variables mentioned above.

After four rounds of forecasting, Mr Pieter Duminy and Mr Dian Moore were identified as the winner and runner up, respectively. Their forecasts were consistently quite close to that of the average class forecast. Below is a Mr Duminy and Moore presented with cash prizes by Mr Stoffel Labuschagne from The Russell Stone Group.

The Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development wishes to acknowledge the generous financial support from the Russell Stone Group.