Students of Faculty of Economics and Business of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY), Candra Kusuma Warna (Department of Management of batch 2015) and Lenny Indah Nidyawanti (Department of Economics of batch 2016) became the winner at Campus College Competition 2018 organized by Bank Indonesia. At the competition bringing a theme of ‘Roles of Technology Innovation in Enhancing Competitiveness of Local Economy’, the UMY team defeated other 88 teams including teams from Universitas Padjajaran (the first runner up), Universitas Brawjaya (the second runner up), Universitas Indonesia (the third runner up), and Universitas Darussalam Gontor (the fourth runner up).
Candra and Lenny wrote a paper entitled ‘Optimizing Islamic Public Funds through kitaberdaya.com to Develop Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia.’ The competition was conducted on 1 April – 31 October 2018, and announced on December 2018. Besides, participants of the competition were students from universities signing Memorandum of Understanding with Bank Indonesia on establishing a central bank or BI corner at the universities.
“The competition was different from other paper competitions that participants usually submit their paper and present it, and then the winners are announced, but at the competition the participants handed over their paper, the winners are announced and presented their paper on 8 January 2019. Our paper discusses how to leverage Islamic public funds, wakaf and zakat, for SMEs through kitaberdaya.com utilized a center for the fund raising. The funds will be managed by Bank Indonesia and BAZNAS. Afterwards, there will be a team to empower the SMEs which obtain three facilities, namely funding, supervising and marketing,” told Candra in an interview on Thursday (10/1).
The competition aim is that Bank Indonesia would like to motivate and facilitate higher education. Through the competition, Bank Indonesia received recommendations from universities members, particularly regarding strategic policy making. The competition also assisted Bank Indonesia to be a leading research center. The competition was expected to identify strategic issues, either actual or potential issues which Bank Indonesia will face in a middle and long term.
Additionally, Candra and Lenny were glad to be the winner at the national competition. “We are grateful to win the competition since, even though we are from a private university, we could compete with other best universities. We are proud of being representatives of UMY in a national competition. It can also promote our faculty and motivate our friends to express their thoughts in positive ways,” declared Candra.
