In Maldives, a country-led youth entrepreneurship movement blooms

The Maldivian government could name as early as this weekend the winners of its first-ever youth-focused startup business challenge.

The technical committee began Sunday the process of selecting who among the more than 200 applicants — aged 18-35 — for the first round of the Getset program will receive a loan of up to 800,000 Maldivian rufiyaa ($52,000). The process is expected to take five days to complete.

But the plan is to announce the winners immediately after that, as one of the pledges the government made when it announced the competition in November was “that [the applicants] will know very quickly,” according to J. David Galipeau, the knowledge and innovation management regional team leader at the U.N. Development Program’s Asia-Pacific office and designer of the program.