JAKARTA -- Ramadan is usually a bumper time of year for shopping malls in the Indonesian capital as friends meet for dinner after the daytime fast. Not this year.
The month-long religious festival, which ended on Saturday and was followed by the festival of idul fitri, or Eid, was a holiday period to forget for hard-pressed businesses. Malls in locked down cities have been shuttered while operating hours for supermarkets and drugstores have been severely curtailed.
