As Indonesia counts its votes, how is the economy playing its part?

Hello, you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report, live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne and a very good morning to you.

Indonesia, it's Southeast Asia's largest economy

and the world's third largest democracy,

and right now it's tallying votes in its presidential election.

Initial estimates indicate that Prabeoo Subianto, the country's defense minister, holds a significant lead.

He is competing against two former provincial governors in the race to succeed the popular outgoing President Joko-do-do and in this election campaign

economic growth and jobs have been top of the agenda. The BBC Steve Lye has more.

Just to give you some background then the voting age in Indonesia is 17 and voter turnout at the

last election was 80%. So if you add to that that about 52% of registered

voters are under the age of 40, with one- of the total under the age of 30, then you

get a clear idea that there's a very young population and a very engaged electorate here

in Indonesia.

And that could hold the key to any winning candidate so knowing what they

want is important and if you look at unemployment it's just over 5% but what's telling

is if you look deeper into the numbers you'll find that for those under 25 years old

that number jumps to around 19% which is concerning given Indonesia's young population

so I sat down with University of Indonesia students.

They were all voting in their second election, they were around 22 years old, and they'll be

graduating soon.

So they are young, but they are also paying attention to politics and who their next leader might be.

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